Third-self Thin (copyright 2010)

Third-self Thin (copyright 2010)

A Story by Phil Macias
"

We're operatives. Vague. Thin. Untraceable...that is, if you have a hacked xterm and a handy 120v line.

"
      I'm where I was twelve hours ago, twelve hours before that, and hope to be in the twelve hours from now. What was the last thing I typed? What did I just read? Is it all in a buffer or cache?  Did I back it up or send it to log? Answers to problems I'd love to forget about, for maybe at least a minute.
"Six-fifty."
I barely heard Doreen. I think I catch it on the rebound - I remember hearing it. Sometimes stuff comes across like that when I'm processing or day-dreaming, like deja vu, only punchier. Like tape-delay. Six-fifty. F**k if I have that much in cash. But there's the tray on the counter with the upside-down cup and the sandwich in the red plastic boat. I've got six in bills plus coin squashed into my right hand by my side, the rest in cards in my pocket I don't want to use. I open my fingers in front of her so the ones blossom like week-old lettuce. I inhale and look up at her with upturned eyes without raising my head. She does the same and exhales for me. Slowly scooping up the cash in her left hand, she twists the tray on the counter around with her right. Atta' girl, Doreen.
I bet she thinks it's because of her that I come to the Southpark Mall Charlotte Food Court. That or the excellent mall food. But she's also probably thinking it's the 'discounts' I get, too. But it really is her I come here for.   Monday through Thursday, ten-to-five. But I'm only here maybe once or twice a month and it's probably bad form to get to know her. This place I also enjoy being able to hide away in the corner away from all the damn heat and bugging-me people. Malls suck anyways, but Charlotte sucks more this time of year anymore. Humid, hot. OK, hazy, too. And it isn't even June yet.  So I sit here in the corner under the AC vent with, what, a stale turkey-cheese thing and all the cold drink I can drink. Cola, Sprite, seltzer - whatever, it's all free with the cup. At least that's how I do it. And time. I got the whole rest of the day to get away from whatever the hell was yesterday and what's sure to be nagging me tomorrow.
I need to be seriously liquid. I got close to thirty-K from our work holed up in cards and accounts but thirty-ill-gotten-K won't last forever if and when I lose my legal job. Playing poor; maybe I'd last ten months with rent and loans and living. Computer job at RealTech keeps me, well, Real. It keeps me in the books and keeps me moving and for that I'm truly grateful.
Sandwich is sloppy but tasty. Lettuce is too long or big or whatever. It drags the dressing out of the wrap and all over the place. Such bullshit. If I was at home I'd just jam the whole thing in my mouth out of impatient disgust and get it over with - chew like a dog 'till my mouth gets tired of chewing. Not here, though. Gotta finesse it - try to just bite it free while I hang the pathetic mess over the little grease-splotched plastic basket.
From my bent over position, I see what I think is the back of Ben just through the door. At least I think it's him from the back. He can't see me from where I am. He's ridiculously poised and calm and tall but that's not really like him at all. Wears one of those Chinese imperial hair cuts - that pony-tail thing with everything else shaved off. He won't change that even though we got spooked the last skim. It was a richer haul than we were used to but there was a Trojan waiting at the clearing-house server. Turned out OK, I guess. We got the funds. We weren't caught. But protocol says we gotta change up our looks and third-selves. That means hair, typing patterns, give-away clothes. New names complete the package. So Ben's probably not 'Ben' anymore. And who the hell am I now? Oh, yeah. 'Jim'. I'm 'Jim'. Yeah, names matter even in places like this since the People's Identity Protection Act now allows search of publicly-made audio and video records.
He turns, so slowly. His whole body turns when all he has to do is turn like his head and shoulders. His eyes don't move much, either. I'm still bent over, soaking sandwich in hand. Ben finally sees me - at least the squint makes me think so. I freeze as Ben narrows his eyes, sorta looking at me. Oh yeah, the hair. I dyed mine blond last month. I did it myself so it looks like s**t. But it looks kinda like me, though, so he squints. 
Moving in closer he mouths 'Thom'? I just smirk. What an idiot you would be if I'm not. And since I am you still look like an a*****e for asking. 
"Yeah, Ben."
"Jim."
"What?"
"I'm 'Jim'."
"What? Wait, I'm 'Jim', Ben."
I put down the turkey sandwich basket thing and roll the side of my hand on the edge to scrape of the oil dressing. 
"F**k. 'Jim'? Well, we both can't be 'Jim'."
"F**k, no."
"Do we really gotta do that, Thom?"
"F**k, no."
"F**k. OK, then."
I reach out my clean left hand to Ben and we backwards shake, left hand to right. A meet like this is rare. I'm in Charlotte pretty often. Not so much for Ben. But we have to swap some goods, talk about upcoming deals and, well, about the fourth. Ben then slides an overloaded, massively wrinkled envelop to me on the red-plastic tabletop. 
"Clean cards. Twenty-five and fifty a pop."
"Cool. I'm down to my last, well, sandwich here." I point at it and I swear the damn thing is actually melting. How much liquid can come out of a turkey sandwich?
"Looks like I'm just in time then, Jim. Where to next?" Ben glances to his right then his left. His eyes keep shifting slightly even after his head has stopped moving.
"Yeah, Jim. Swing by Philly then back home. I've got a couple of servers to set up. Done in a few days. You?"
One look at that pack of cash cards and I know I can get some decent food for a little while. I've had it with this lump. I drop it and grab the wadded up napkins around me and squeegee the grease from my fingers.
"I'm headed north, too."
"Home again, Thom?"
I lean in, grab the salt with my left hand and tap away at the table a little with the shaker. Scatter noise to mask conversation.
"Yeah. But while we're here, are we...um...still on to meet the a...the fourth?"
"Yeah. A few minutes. Oughta' be here by now."
Ben twists his whole body to his right to check out the clock. I've known Ben since school. We did some gentle hacks back then and realized not only that we were good, but that we were on to a better way to steal money online. Ben set up this posse thing a couple of years ago. Four hackers living in four different places in the country. All have travel jobs, all have a big, diverse net presence. We use computers all over the country, public and private. One of us sources accounts to skim. Another figures out the hack and collection. A third executes and the fourth retrieves and cleans the trail. That process may take place over a month and cover over two-dozen legal and fake accounts from all over the Internet. We make it look casual " like normal activity from what looks like many individuals. Tracking this by just looking at logs on a hacked server is next to impossible, even for the Feds. At least so far. And we continue to hope so.
So rule is we never actually talk or chat online. We leave each other messages or drafts on shared accounts. We put notes in blogs. We chat by changing personal info in IM apps. We know each other's phrasing and word style and and stick to the plan for the job. Ben, Kar, me - we're the core. Fourth has been hard to find so we haven't had one yet. Makes me wonder why we need one. But Ben found this 'Crey' and wants to bring her on. Name came up a few times in chats. Nothing on a search, nothing hard about this person. That's good. Kar and Ben have had some email drafts with her, though. Today Ben, me and Crey meet then Crey will play cleanup. Ben of course has a whole protocol for this. Planning; that's Ben. Kar is an accounts specialist. Me, I'm hard code and hardware by nature right now playing both collector and clean-up. We are now at the risk-a-real-person-meeting step mostly because we want to thin out my time online. Ben and I have done a meet like this before. That's how found Kar. My job - just shut up and listen and make sure everything seems OK.
Almost on cue walks a geeked femme, about twenty. Pack, sleek case probably with a netbook or pad in hand, looking like she doesn't really know anyone. That's good. Looks like a hacker. Head stops at us - she must have recognized Ben. She walks slowly towards us. I duck my head a little to the right. 
"Uh, Jim?"
"Yes."
"Yup."
Her face gets all wrinkly when we both answer. Ben raises his left index finger. 
"Ahh, that would be me...Crey?"
"Yeah. Umm...OK."
Crey glances a couple of times towards me with darting eyes as she reaches for the thin aluminum chair between Ben and I. 
"Ahh...we're both 'Jim'. Long story. Have a seat, ah...Crey."
Head still hurts. I'm still hungry. I tune out alot of what is going on until I hear something about MAC addresses.
"So, Crey, why not ARP-spoofing? I mean, cafes use it with head-ends so joes can net out and browse..."
"...but that sometimes can be checked by finding the spoof request on backtrace."
She has a little smile on that little round face. Right. Yeah. Good point, Crey.
"So what would you suggest besides forwarding?"
"I would use spoofing before I jacked in, or..."
Crey's eyes roll to the sky. Ben once again raises his left hand, pointer finger extended.
"maybe..."
Crey looks a little lost. A little blank. Just like Ben sometimes. But boy, is Ben focused on her. He looks like he's conducting with that finger.
"maybe...ha"
"maybe hardware...Jim. Hardware hacking, you know, when you replace the...ethernet hardware with a card with a different MAC address."
She's like all tensed - sounds like she's auditioning or something. Christ, Ben. I'm toxic here. I roll my head to the right and spill out of my chair towards a free table. Stomach's a little tight. On my feet I snag some napkins from a big red upright dispenser and blow my nose. Thank God. Think I'll do that a few more times. Bathroom and back, I can see Ben alone again at the table, Crey exiting stage right.
"You OK, Jim?"
"Yeah. You OK, Jim?"
"Hell yes."
Ben shakes his head so his pony-tail thing fwaps the sides of his head. Then he goes blank, staring at the wall or something behind me. He does that. He looks all dead or tranced then begins talking and making you think he's undead. Brain-tasking or something. Maybe ADD or the skids. 
"She said she had an angle on bank transfers. I don't know, man. Do we wanna work bank transfers? I mean, PIPA is pretty sophisticated these days. That 2015 court thing said they could put up taps on live federal transfers."
"So, we stay away from live federal transfers, B...Jim." 
I glance down at the boat and melted sandwich. 
"She OK, Jim?"
"Yeah. Sound OK to you?"
"Guess. Seemed to know her s**t."
"Maybe she'll follow up on your transfer later. I'll draft her the specifics."
Ben then gets a call - that screechy riff-rap thing everybody samples. He takes it, because he's not supposed to be alone; not supposed to be here with me, Kar, Crey or anyone. 'Missed calls' show up on logs and make people ask 'why'. Very circumstantial. Ben is really OK. Small-time fence and cracker. Good at skimming IDs from mainly central computers, but in subsidiary offices. Never the corporate headquarters. He worked like I did - grabbing pennies from lots of little accounts and give 'em to some Joe who's ID we borrow. Then maybe buy stuff with the planted credits and ship to a variety of accounts or cards for pickup.
As the moments pass in our little reunion my head begins to pound again. A woman in a couple at another table just talks too loud. Her laugh twinges something odd inside my head, so I have to leave. I snag the fat envelop of plastic joy and give a quick nod to my compadre. I eye that cackling happy b***h on the way out but I don't think she saw me, or cares.
One more night in 'The Davenport'. I'll leave as soon as I'm through. Flight at nine. I jack the WIFI from next-door - 'Ted's Most Excellent Network'. Three users doing what looks like web and chat traffic. My back to a window overlooking a brick wall, I'm lounged in the middle of a sadly weak and formless half-sofa. Workbook out of sleep, I open up my card-hack routine and change the MAC address to one I skimmed here the last time. Doubt that person is here now, anyways. They were checking yahoo mail at the time so I will have to use one of my yahoo accounts. Cross over to Messenger and checked cached chat messages. There, there it is:
  "Have to visit Aunt Cici soon. Care for that Mall info?". 
Hmm, something at CitiBank. Kar stored the account info at the SkyMall account. Sash-grab the skim. I'll have to transfer it to some anonymous joe's account for pickup. I wipe the incoming message and leave one of my own so they know what I'm doing:
       "Time to go to Cici. Mall's fine. Leaving the car at Joe's. Pick it up later.". 
I'd prefer to steal from corps or rich-a*s billionaires but both have accountants crawling all over accounts looking for every spare cent. So joes it is. We make it look, OK, I make it look like someone added something wrong or fat-fingered a transaction. Most people don't even look their bill. We scope joes who don't have a lot of reversals. We masquerade as inflated charges or extra fees. Feds won't see you if you hide in small-time accounts. 
Hack done, I wait a little online. All night I'm up, it seems, in my little hotel room. Eight bucks or so transferred. looks good. I put that terminal screen in the background and leave for a few minutes. When I return - beeping. A zip-mail - a one-line message from a sendmail bounced off a closed mail server. Bogus IP routes the bounce back to me. Looks like spam. Headers say...looks like from Kar. I can log off - the accounts from her side looks clear. Slick chick, she is. It's "Kar" like in "care", but with a "K" like in "Kill". Met her twice. Her thing is accounts and scripting code to divert funds and interested eyes. That kind of s**t needs both a keen mind and slow thinking. She's not technic but quick, though. Hot tech fingers blaze through righteous code. 
A look at the time and indeed I should log off. Never, NEVER stay in with the same IP and NIC number for longer than, say, forty minutes if your interacting. Home system grabbing a movie - fine. Phone logged into MSN, online and not active - cool. But sending asynchronous bits back and forth for a long while raises eyebrows, we think. If you're legit - fine. If they're turned on to you, Feds can check logs and retrieve the crypts and sigs. That typing-style thing? PIPA allows Feds to monitor public netspace and install code into CPUs. One thing we all suspect is tracking keyboard activity. Not every keystroke but the pattern of typing. I and others don't know if this is actually true but there really is an encrypted string and buffering signature bits transported in the IP stack every forty minutes or so from anything with an IP. We can't decipher them, but like crypted passwords we can grab and copy them. They change all the time but presumably Mister Fed knows who is using what when.
I do the room review through the TV, cash out and head to catch my nine PM to Newark. In the terminal and on the plane I don't go online. I don't need to right now. Let it all sit. Read Sky Mall, play Halo. I don't know - talk to whosever next to me.
I leave Newark's outgoing security center and blow a little cash on a cab. It's like two AM but I'm beat so z's would be a relief. Back to my little shithole where I can gulp food and sleep on the couch. Saturday off. Just then the phone goes off. One, two...sounds like a lot of messages - texts and emails. I finger it to silence in my pocket. After a few more vibes I know something is up. I ask the cabbie to pull over to Starbucks. I can Boingo the WIFI under an anonymous account.
Eight-fifty lighter for coffee and some cake thing in a Starbucks on East Street at, what...twelve-thirty? Messages from Ben and Kar and...deposit accounts? This soon? My face close to my screen. The totals are way too...should have been one-percent of, what, $8,614.78? Eight-sixty or something. It's pulled in...$524.15 split across forty-some accounts? Joe's account is now...fifty-large? From eight to fifty in a night? It's like its a linked account - overdraft or something. Or a hide? Oh s**t! What's going on? Wait a minute - what did Kar tap into? She said...
"You OK, man?"
"Wha...?"
I look up from my looking down. It's the coffee guy in that green smock with all the caffeine stains. I slowly let my eyes drift to the thin wire out the back of my computer up to the back of the wireless router. Does he even know...
"You, like, need food or something? We're closing down the grill in ten."
I kick back and wave my right hand a little away from my keyboard.
"No man, I'm OK. I'm cool. Do you do refills?"
"What, on like your coffee?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it's like half-price. Do you want one?"
"What, a refill? Nah. I'm OK."
The kid shrugs and turns to his right to a sorry mess of paper and old cold coffee on the table next door. Yeech! First he picks up the paper cups and walks them to the trash. Back again for the forks and plates that go in the bin at the end of the counter. Our hero returns a third time with his wet towel. One wipe and its all hygienic for the next customer. 
I look at my blinking cursor wishing I knew what kind of mess is before me. I start with who or how this happened. We've never been caught like this. WE'VE never been caught like this. I think we're OK now but I wonder if I should just close up now. But we do clean work, this crew...except Crey - I mean, who is she? But then why the f**k would she join us and burn us the same night? Unless she fucked up? But Ben isn't likely to f**k up on a novice. So what's going on? Oh s**t. I dunno. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm over-caffeinated... 
Have to think clearly. Calm down. Messages from Ben and Kar. Wait a minute...if there's something weird with Crey maybe I shouldn't go o Ben " not yet. Kar doesn't know Crey. I can trust her. Risk talking, texting, IMing - whatever. OK, OK. Um...
BBMGlobal is about as public as it gets. Not popular for us but has gobs of traffic. Heavily watched but then one can hide in that crowd.
"If you Care, did Joe's email make sense???"
I sit. I sit and wait. I sit and wait in that cruddy little java bar in Newark in the middle of the night contemplating a half-price caffeine fix while waiting on a live line to my partner in crime. Christ. Come on, Kar. I know you sleep with your Motorola under your head. I know that IF you got all the automails that I got you wouldn't even DREAM of sleeping at a time like this. Kar, come on.
Blank screen, still. I nudge again. Nothing. Then...an invite to Yahoo over the legit java-bar wireless.     
"I care. Joe upset me."
Bright gal. I only got, what, two more messages to send over BB before someone might figure out we're talking over two IMs.
      "Is Craving killing us?? I never Been there before."
      "Been there done that? Don't know. Head home u. I'm At Lanta. No call"
      "Home, then."
I shut down both connections and close up for my trip. S**t. I told her I suspect Crey. She thinks its Ben. A Real-life meet. Wants to meet at my home-away-from-home. Charlotte. Anyone listening in wouldn't know that. She's in Atlanta, no s**t, and she's gonna meet me in Charlotte. No calls.  Christ, back to the airport.  S**t, I hope all this back-tracking won't interest anyone. And on a Friday night, yet!
Since I'm so close to home I hit it for the quickest of micro-showers, fresh clothes and a three-day of meds and supplements. Cab to Newark Liberty with the rest of my cash and hopefully onto the four-ten. This is the life to which I am so well adapted. Basics are netbook, phone and chargers. I always travel with two or three-days worth of clothes and the overnight fixings. Meds, checkbook and cash, too. I'm always wearing a lightweight multi-pocket jacket, full shoes, comfy pocketed pants and a tee and loose shirt. Gear includes cable bag with cables and every connector-converter known to man, extra mem sticks, extra USB NICs and extra batteries. I have a mini-hub, headset and Belkin MicroRouter 450. My computer is the guts of a Donovan 250 UltraLite 6" netbook moved into a Donovan 500 9" case with room for my hardware modifications. Phone is a standard C-Berry Cross-Call on the Amazon backbone and unlimited services. When traveling, everything goes into the pack - a one-sling Ogio with waterproof lining, cut-proof kevlar-ceranimide fabric shell and stowable steel-cable tether. 
Free-roaming like I am, cafes are workstations. Restaurant bathrooms are showers. Stalls are changing rooms. A corner sofa in a cafe; a nap-bed. I don't really sleep times like this when I have to be wildly mobile. Hotel rooms are optional but sometimes necessary. WIFIs everywhere but power isn't so available rent-outlets are a valuable find. Food is everywhere so that's not a problem but sometimes plastic and gift cards aren't accepted by the one-off food joint that offers anonymity so I'm always looking for a ATMs. S**t, there's a flow to staying connected to things, especially if you're constantly moving. Phone IS everything, but the browser and screen sucks and it can't crunch or compile code. If I'm on the computer sometimes I re-route the phone's IMs and mail to it if I need to process files or attachments. When it's time to go, sometimes I suspend or hibernate depending on things like power, WIFI and how long I gotta be offline. 
Yes, I know we all need that rich, full real life with friends and meaning, but e-world is here to stay. It's the bad part of town we all gotta live in. I'm no data-junkie hard on the skids; eyes and hands fixed to feeds, short-focused and unable to deep-process. I  need to work. Most just develop that filtered, back-brain version of themselves that blogs political sentiments and peep-holes the human condition. People like me who actually live off e-world need a third pretense. We're operatives. Vague. Thin. Untraceable. Being a careful fellow means I don't like runs like this online without some forwarding intel. But I gotta ninja the bits we flipped and uncross log-trails in this cato-strastic disaster el-rapido because someone will notice us soon. I'm online for my life. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's all on the line for us. Online for us. Third-self thin.
  I hop to Charlotte under a card I only use for just such emergencies listed under my middle name. I clean up in the dented brushed-metal toilets in Charlotte-Douglass and get to the Southpark Mall on bus by ten AM. Coffee, again, what else, what looks like an actual baked, people-made muffin and a free electric outlet. Kar didn't say when she'd be here so I dig in for the long haul. 
The skim should have only lasted twelve hours. It then send reports to four one-time use email accounts. We set them up so they first bounce a few times through accounts owned by some Joes we hacked. The script is still looping, still pulling off funds so we're still gonna get messages for a little while, a trail I don't like. I see my options, our options, slipping away. I don't know what happened, or even if someone is on our trail, yet. I look over my transcripts. No problems. Kar never f***s up. Ben already did his work. So did Crey blow our escape? I haven't answered ANY email from Ben and Kar, but there's nothing queued up from Crey. So odd. 
Once an hour I get up and move from to another table. After a little, I sit outside the Food Court  watching the entrance then walk in again and settle somewhere else for another hour. I eat more casual, not-really meals. S**t, it's four. After four. The dinner crowd will be here soon. The food joints are all changing shifts. Before me is a little oblong block of lemon cake more oil than lemon. I carefully lift its waxy-stiff wrapper over a blessedly-close barrel-mouthed garbage can. Sayonara, s****y bread thing. 
I couldn't have missed Kar. I hope she's coming today and not tonight. I have to long-focus - look at the door, the people. I'm staring at screens too too much today. Who we have? The zombie in the too-big shoes with the laces dragging all over. Some whipped customer. A senior in a paper hat probably stretching social security. A gal with bags - lots of bags. Kid. Kid. Geeky femme with the pack...
Crey? That's...cant' be. Crey? What the...? Oh s**t! Doesn't look like the gal...not dressed like she was...She saw me! I duck to right, shoulder under the table tipping over the half-cup of stale, cool coffee onto my right arm. The table shakes when my a*s catches the corner from underneath. In maybe thirty seconds I hear a voice close by.
"Jim?"
"S**t." I move my head nearer the grimy bumpy center post of the little square Food Court table. I say nothing. I shut up.
"Jim? That IS you, isn't it? Jim?"
I press my left temple against the grease-crusted steal upright tube. I feel my hair stick to it a little. From three-quarters upside down I see Geeky girl's Sketchered feet at two-o'clock and her even, thin legs running past seven-o'clock to above the table. Crey. I know the voice.
"Yeah?" I make my way to a normal seated position, arm streaked in clammy coffee, little tiny bumps of embarrassment along the back of my head.
"Thought I could find you here. Are you OK, Jim?" Crey has pulled a long stray braid back behind her ear. 
"Um, I know I'm not supposed to talk to you, but I wanted to say 'Hi'. Have you seen Jim...the OTHER Jim"?
This girl IS Crey, but not the same. What, is she hiding? Why not all stealth? I mean, we're in a shitload of trouble and she's all...timid, quiet. Wait. She's not dressed at ALL like...I quickly look to the left then the right. No one else around, really. No Fed-types, no cops. no one looking of authority. Just regulars.
Crey twists her right leg inward and leans on the toe. The knee bends and her left hip juts out. Clothing's all wrong - light colors and sorta stylish. This is Crey but it ain't Crey. What is up? She's no operative. She doesn't look like she could run code, hack a line, skim a Joe. 
"Do you have any idea what's gone on in the past twelve hours, Crey?" 
The gal twists her head to the side like I dog I once had. "Crey? That was my character; a part...Jim, he was casting for a small-house movie. Posted online. Some cyber thing."
Movie? Jim? I slow down. I sit really quiet. I put my hands on the square brown Food Court  tabletop and skootch out my chair a little with my butt. 
"Movie? Look...what's your name?"
"Cherie. Hey, is Jim going to be here or can you tell me if I'm called back?"
Called back? I have no idea what's going on. I need to ask Cherie Crey questions. I need to focus on what she means. Then my phone vibrates. Normally I wouldn't look but then I'm waiting on Kar. I slide my left hand off the table and into my jacket side pocket. It buzzes again as I check the screen - Unlisted Number. Right. Take it. Answer it. 
"Hello...?"
Nothing. No one. But the line is live. To my left I see Cherie Crey fidget her body. Then I get an earful of what sounds like a modem. Is this a telecom calling me? A bank? Habit makes me hit Alt-R, a macro on my phone to record the call. Reaching for my netbook, Control-R starts recording outside sound so I can dictate...
"Excuse me...um...Cre...Cherie. Just a..."
"Well, Jim...thought you might be here to chat about my work. I'll just...go then.
I'm recording the call. Can't make out if it's negotiating to send or accept. Phone down and to speaker. OK, OK. Gotta find out what Crey...where is she? I squirrel my head around. Crey is...gone. 
“Crey?”
I tap the keys I need to on my system and check the lights on my phone. Still syncing, then the call drops. S**t. My head snaps left then right again. Where is Crey? 
I figure I gotta get up and find this gal and get some answers. I scoop up my system and phone, get my bag on my back, and make it to my feet when I catch mil-spec fatigues with zippers up the whole leg and a lopy, bobby 'doo by the door to he left. Kar. S**t, it's Kar. Gear under my arm I run towards her. That door is the closest way to the mall so I figure Crey went out that way. 
As I get closer Kar stops and bobs her head in what must be disbelief. That's her " white-frill blouse, opera-mask shades and that odd leather bag.
"Thom? Thom! Thom!?"
I skutter to nearly a stop, feet down, sneakers squeaking. "Kar? Hi. Uh...we gotta...we gotta...follow me!"
I run to the left when I hit the mall. I don't know if Kar is with me or not. I don't know which way I'm running. Just hope Crey is headed this way.
"Thom...what's going on? Where...were we...were we tagged? Isn't this going to..."
"No no no. Not tagged, Kar. We're looking for a...a...Crey. Crey's here."
One big screech this time and I stop and turn around. S**t, I'm breathing hard already. I hear many many little hard steps as Kar's billowy jump-jacket or whatever waves about before she plants both feet tightly together just in front of me.
"Cherie...Crey. Cr...Crey. She's here. She's just...here. But it's not her. Ben..."
I turn and go. I start running again towards the closest exit. I clear the big glass doors. Thank God they're open! I'm looking at Lot C as I hit sidewalk. Gear in arm, pack now swung around to my front, I don't see her. Where the f**k is she? Who the f**k is she?
OK, it's been twenty-four hours since the skim. I've already flown from and back to Charlotte. I spent today in food court. I have poured over logs, checked scripts and still have no clue as to what went wrong or how deep s**t we're in. Kar shows up and within minutes I met Crey, or who I believed was Crey and must have looked like an insane person to Kar running around who I haven't seen in long time. 
At a coffee hole nearby I lay it all out for her. Kar stays silent through the whole thing. I finish the story and just wait on what Kar's gonna say but there's nothing. She's quiet, we're quiet. Her mouth goes into sort of  frown and her eyes bulge a little. We just kind of look at each other, eyes darting about, hands nervously tic-ing, then at almost the same time hands move to packs. We set up computers and phones, log into protected accounts on each other's system and have a look at the world.
My eyes flit across the screen, fingers across keys. "Your accounts looked good, Kar. I couldn't see these before, of course. I set up the skim at...five-thirty...four. Checksums, sigs...all good, Kar. It was all good. Your usual good work."
"I see the feed from the account...good. This is your standard script, Thom? The back-end was...quiet. Small accounts, drip or squirt transfers. No big activity in the previous twenty-four hours."
My xterm stops. Account numbers, rates, destinations, amounts. With Kar's info I can backtrace. Here's the one that gave us all the problems, the one we called 'Joe1397'. All the other local accounts are tagged to a bank ID. Joe1397 is tagged to, well, another number - another account.
"OK, OK, so...wait. You're telling me Joe one-three-nine-seven has a linked account that replenishes when anything is drawn from it."
"Well, it should have grabbed one-percent of, what, $8,614.78? But look here." I pull up another xterm playing back what I saw.
"The account drops by $8.61 and...thirty-minutes later there's a deposit of $10.35. My prog pulls $8.63 more because we're over threshold and...right there, another deposit of $12.38."
Kar squats down on the ground to my right. She flips her bobbing blond hair over the side of her head. "And this was the total, then...$524.15?"
Kar widens her eye, turns her hear rightward as she slowly stands up. 
"And then we get all the alerts."
"Alerts about more and more withdrawals. So what are we dealing with, Thom?"
I try to swing my legs out under the table to the right side of the chair. It's a little bumpy and noisy but I get there.
Kar has hung her head and interwoven her fingers. I look towards the ground and those combat-boot legging things she's wearing. "It's like, if I pull...eighteen dollars from it, it puts in eighteen more back in. Like overdraft protection."
"Well, yeah, but is does more. It can initiate transfers to the account in increments less than the deposited amount or make deposits greater that the withdrawn amount."
I stretch out my hands and kind of push on the table and back of the chair with my elbows to help stand up and stretch my legs. 
"What?"
"Both...it does both. That's why our accounts keep growing."
"Kar...that's a...that makes this thing a feeder. Those don't really exist, do they? Feeders are..."
"Looks like we have one here."
"Oh s**t. Those are custom, aren't they? You know the kind of code you need for that? That's like stuff Xoom or FreeMac do. You need a hard-line into a bank. You know what that takes?"
"Straight-up corporate bank s**t, Mil, org-crime, feds...yes, I know. Beyond me, Thom."
I'm back looking at the desk and my computer, my phone... "And it's still running?"
Kar's shoulders rise to her ears. Her shortie jacket lifts off her high belt.
"I guess? It's going to different accounts, right?"
"Yes - a couple of the usuals. Two new that I could tell of. I shut those down. Rest is in movement through temp holding accounts to I-don't-know-where."
I glance at my watch then start packing up gear. I look around the floor and the nearby tables for anything else of mine.
"OK, Kar, we gotta go. We gotta chat this out, face to face, offline."
"Here? Now?"
"No. Pack up, Kar. Ever see Charlotte by bus?"
Charlotte Metro transport has WIFI but I don't care about that. What matters is no cams or recorders that we know of, yet. We're here to talk. Pay by cash, too. That's something I'm low on these days but people will gladly give you twenty for a twenty-five card they can validate on their their own phone. Risky but necessary.         
I crash on the split, taped vinyl seat in the back of the bus and skid into the plexy wall by the wheel-well. Kar places her bag next to the seat and sits beside me, side to me. Plexy means I can SEE this s****y city roll by. As the bus starts it lurches twice and I can feel the flywheel spinning power to the wheels. S****y green low-em rides. Dust floats like a cloud of lazy bugs. I inhale this s**t and blink my eyes. Now I remember why I hate Metros so much. Bumpy jerky rides don't play well with my brain.
"OK, OK...so lets figure out who's after us, why they're doing this."
"OK, Thom, um...we have a routine skim, routine Joe."
"Or so we think."
"Or so we think, but we gotta think that way for now. Scoped out by Crey, or so says Ben. I run the account checks and the checks are OK."
"But 'Crey' doesn't exist, Kar."
"Right, Thom, but we don't know that, at least right now. At least we're not supposed to know that. I want to figure out what we're supposed to think."
"OK Yeah. Right. So we have this weird account and it APPEARS Crey either fucked up, or she set us up."
"OK, Thom, but I have, what, half-a-dozen messages from Ben and your scripts but nothing from Crey. If she fucked we'd hear from her."
"So we think she's the bad-guy. Just ran, right?"
"Right, Thom. And if this is a feeder it's probably topping off ten accounts. She could have set up skims on any number of them, run up any amount she wanted and let us take the rap."
I look through the front of the bus. Collier Street ahead. S**t, lots of stops. Jerky little stops.
"Yeah, Kar, but handling a feeder like that makes Crey org-crime, a Fed or Mil."
"So we're dealing with a pro, so then we run..."
"We run, get caught or turned in and Crey gets away with the loot."
"So...OK, OK..so we're fall-guys. That's simple. Easy. And in this 'Crey lives' world, what happens to Ben?"
"I don't know...maybe he dies - pretends to die. He wouldn't get arrested..."
"Unless, Thom, he turns himself in first and cuts a deal. Blames Crey, maybe names us, too, does a few in house and comes out rich."
"Collier Street. Collier Street."
A large man with short, thick arms and legs, stubby fingers full of tightly-stretched plastic bags lumbers forward in the aisle. I scootch back another seat and hang over the backrest in front to look at Kar.
"But...um...a...Ben created Crey. We just luck out on that. So, what does that change, Kar?"
"Well...Ben does the deed, Cry gets the blame and Ben is a victim just like us, right?"
"Yeah, Kar, but like we said, Ben would have to fall too, or pretend to die or disappear. How the hell? Everyone's fucked."
"F**k you, f**k me, f**k everyone, it seems."
"And not in a good way."
We just sit there dumbly looking in the other's direction. I'm out of ideas right now. This is confusing. Doesn't help that right now I notice that Kar's really a le-femme. Quaffed hair, trick casuals, 'licious face. She looks like the best drawn game-dames. I wish I had something more to share with her right now besides opportunistic sexy cursing.
"Thom, whoever owns the big account will be plenty pissed and probably whack whoever did this, right? That means Ben's protecting himself."
"Ben makes us the fall guys, we're looking for Crey...I get it."
"..and maybe still Ben fakes his death."
"OK, but..."
"What, Thom?"
"If Ben is Ben and Ben is Crey, he had to do it all...alone - the accounts, this double-fake thing, and whatever else he has planned later."
Kar closes her eyes a little and draws her head backwards as though I suddenly turned green or something.
"Meaning..."
"Ben ain't smart enough to do this by himself."
A two-plus hour tour of Charlotte at four-point-five miles per hour. Live conversation with a woman for the first time in forver and and sometimes net searching on our phones. Later,a sit-down dinner for two at Chipolte's and I know I'm beat. Kar's wiped, too. She springs for a single room at the Best Western since she flew on a legit card. Bought her own dinner too. It all still has to make sense to whoever might be watching. And I'm not here, really. Anyone watching me, if they're watching me, has to assume I'm paying cash for everything. S**t I wish we could fly for cash. I could have if I took a bus here. As it is I keep trading cards for cash.
She's the bed, I'm the couch. She's out and I can never sleep anyways so that's perfect. I'm mumbling to myself as I lie on my back, staring at the yellow-beige bumpy ceiling cut by patchwork shadows and the dull thudding of an outdoor blinking light.
      "So Ben creates Crey so there is no attention to himself. OK, so he learned about feeders and how to f**k your friends. He'd also have to disappear. Dramatic faked death. So knowing about Crey means we know it's Ben, so hurray! Case closed. Just to think, if I hadn't been in the Food Court..." 
      Wait.
      What are the chances that I would go back to Charlotte? This soon? Zilch. Once a month, max. That's the rule. OK, so maybe Crey checks in every day or two, but not every day for a month. I shouldn't have ever met her. But there she was, looking for Ben. I was only there because...Kar said so. In fact, Kar walks in not two minutes after Crey leaves. 
      I close my eyes, roll onto my left side then sneak them open again to see if Kar is up. Stupid. The couch is way lower than the bed. 
      I realize I'm beginning to memorize every dimple and shadow in the sideways-looking edge of the bed. My eyes close long enough so I know they're closed then I snap them open when I think I'm losing grip on that. Maybe Ben and Kar are in this together, which makes just me the fall guy. No money for me. No way out. Whacked. Sent up. Fucked. F**k! But why all the theatric s**t with Crey, then? Why does she have to exist at all? OK, OK...so now I know Ben is bad, and I'm not supposed to know Kar is, too. F**k.
      I don't know what's going on but I do I think its time to leave. Kar's nice and all but I feel better figuring this out alone. I drag the single sheet off my body with my right arm and lift my legs so they don't make a noise as I get them off the couch. Sneakers are...OK...there thy are...feel them with my feet. To my feet, pack in hand. I'm bent over the high round edge of the tiny couch reaching for what may be my cables bag when I see a swoopy shadow thrown over middle of the floral-print couch.
      "Thom?"
S**t. I turn about in one slow motion. Kar is up, no s**t. She's back-lit, sort of, wearing her tight-waisted shorty top open at the top and some very soft-looking boxer shorts. Doesn't look pissed, I don't think. Her hair's a little flat but I won't take off points...
"Thom?"
Kar rolls down the tip edge of her shorts and smooths out the maybe-plaid fabric over the tops of her thighs. 
"Yes, Kar?"
      "What's up? Where you going?"
I plant on the couch arm.
      "Um...can't sleep. Just up for a while, Maybe online...a little. Nice...uh...that's an odd bed thing to be wearing, Kar..."
      "And you? With all your stuff?"
      Coat on, pack, filled pockets. Leaving attire. Now what?
      "I...I'm...you know...anal that way. Keep my s**t close. You know..."
      Kar's right palm glues to her forehead, elbow high. Big yawn. 
      "Oh. Thom. I hope you're not leaving. There's something we need to..."
      Her eyes close and she twists about, elbow sweeping out a rather nice semicircle.
      "We have to talk, Thom. Please?"
      OK, late-night shadows and melodramatic dialog don't mix with my caffeine-paranoia real-life-arousal haze. I move, slowly, sloppily, towards a light switch behind me. The one on the wall, by the door.
      "Thom! Please, Don't...we can..."
      I hit the switch, blinding at least me for a few. Probably Kar, too.     
      After a little more clothing on Kar, a little less on me, I run through my story on how I think Kar could have set this up. Charlotte, Crey, Seems less credible the more I go on, but it still does bother me, even in the light. It doesn't take long. Kar is seated on the edge of the bed, hands in that Namaste s**t and head low.
      "Thom?"
      "What?"
      "Thom, how do I know YOU aren't the mastermind here?"
      "Kar...what?"
      "Thom, Thom...think about it. The stuff with Ben, the interview, I never saw Crey in the mall. You're the only one who ever worked directly with Ben on that. Crey is a name to me. All I know is we take on a fourth and then this s**t-storm.”
      Gal has got a point.
      "So that's why you're up?"
      Kar drops her head to the side. Her knees wiggle a little. "Well...I had a question, too. What about the phone call from the modem."
      "When. What?"
      "Just before Crey left."
      I put down my pack and turn my body towards the three little square windows on the south wall of the hotel room. 
"That's when...actually...I almost ran into you at the Food Court. When we chased Crey out of the food court into the..."
      "Yeah. You think maybe there's something on it?"
      "You recorded it, yes? You record this stuff."
      "Yes."
      A couple of minutes in the john, a Cyclone energy gel and I'm in business again. Cable pack, headphones, phone. Audio playback on the phone to an analyzer on the computer. Logs, stats and notes in a coupe of small xterms. We're sitting close together, sharing a headphone, looking at the tiny screen.
      "It sounds like a modem, but the scan...I don't know."
      "What do you mean, Thom?"
      "OK, back here at the start...there...hear all the modem-y sounds? The tone changes?"
      "Yes, it sounds like...a modem."
      "It SOUNDS like a modem but when you look at all the squiggly lines on the graph, there's no order. This should be like binary data and stuff. This looks like...junk."
      "Junk?"
      "Junk. Manufactured. Fake. That, or sampled.”
I mindlessly scroll back to the beginning of the transcript where the signal starts.
      "I don't think this has anything to do with us, Kar. You know, things call us all the times - modems, drive-thrus, you know, they make mistakes. Hackers do this stuff all the time hoping you'll redial and they can get your IMEI."
      Kar is unimpressed. Looks rather DE-pressed. She's not so strong on the tech side. But, what the hell, at least we...
      "What's this file reference here?"
      "That? Oh, that's the ambient file linked to the recorded call."
      Kar's head snaps around. The headphone tugs at my ear just a little. 
      "That thing you do - dictating to the computer."
    "Yeah."
      "Let's listen to that."
      "OK...just...sound like...table sounds. Me, squirming around.”
Then a voice:
"Well, Jim...thought you might be here to chat about my work. I'll just...go then.
      "Who's that?"
      "Um...Crey. Crey."
      "Scroll back."
"Well, Jim...thought you might be here to chat about my work. I'll just...go then.
      "What does she mean, Thom? Jim?"
      "Huh? Oh...'Jim' was...is...my pseudonym. You know, we change names and all. Odd thing was it was Ben's name too. F****r had to pick the same damn name as me."
      "Play it again."
      "Just..."
      "Please."
"Well, Jim...thought you might be here to chat about my work. I'll just...go then.
      "She knew you BOTH as 'Jim'? Was she talking about you, or Ben?"
      "Hmmmm.”
“Yeah, she must have thought both of you were recruiters or agents or whatever. It could be, 'Thom, I thought you might be here to chat about my work.' Or it COULD be 'Ben...thought you, Thom, might be here to chat about my work.'"
      "Oh F**k, Kar. You mean..."
“Jim sent Crey. He knew you were going to be there.”
      "Ben wanted us to know Crey was a fake? How would he know I was here? I mean, unless he was monitoring..."
Phone on the desk to my right vibes a pattern I didn't want to hear. Its from the script that skimmed Joe-1397. I usually leave a routine in the server memory that does the job then flushes like an hour later. This one kept looping because of the feeder. I didn't dare log back in kill it. Just had to hope it would die its little death before someone could get to the server. The script posts a little email rant to an old-school listserv on WAN connectivity. It has bogus headers coded to show what it did some log activity since then. Screemer picks up a hotword in the post, alerts me, then I hit the web page like maybe a million other people do. And Screemer just buzzed me. 
Light up the phone and pull the headers in the fake email exchange. It's in the thousands per account. Someone has seen that by now. Money doesn't...oh s**t!
"Kar!"
"What?"
"Kar, we're in it."
"What?"
"Deep."
Kar hops off the little pudgy sofa and in bare feet tap tap taps her way towards me. I browse to my mail accounts on the netbook.
"This whole thing is the debug from my script when it quit, right? It sends things like dollar amounts, traceroutes, whois, etcetera to me when the script flushes from memory."
"So? What's it say? Somethings not right?"
"Right. Somethings wrong. Up to...here it's OK. This line, and beyond...it doesn't make sense. It's just total garbage."
Kar delicately pulls at the corner of my netbook, twisting it toward her so the screen faces her dead-on.
"How? What should it say?"
"At this point...runtime, destination IP, 'top' info. Then it ends. It just ends. There should be some more account info, routes...you know..."
Kar angles her head to the side as though I've leaned over at a forty-five degree angle.
"Kar, if it crapped out we'd get nothing. No email. This wouldn't even be here. This s**t looks partially legit but some of it...it's like..."
Kar plants her heels and moves to the chair.
"Like what?"
"Like they rebooted the box or it rebooted itself, or intercepted the dump to Screemer. Maybe it started sending to an account. Maybe they knew it the box was compromised. Maybe."
Kar audibly slides the chair towards me a little. Wood on ceramic under weight is not a friendly sound.
"Wait, Thom. What are you saying? Can they track us? Can they find us?"
"No...no they can't. Many many people check this listserv..."
Kar's elbows dig in to the wobbly hotel-room table dangerously close to my computer.
"What about logs, Thom? What about 'ps' and core dumps and..."
"I flushed logs first thing I logged in. Buffered them with zeros. I kill logging for the duration of the skim. It wouldn't show up in rsync or whatever. I snapshot 'proc' before I load the code and create a ghost in memory. You know all this, Kar. I do clean work. We're OK. I'm just saying it looks like we were detected but that was only probably because of the large dollar amount..."
A loud, vibey roar and Kar has slid back the chair and is on her feet, back to me, arms apparently folded.
"Thom, what the f**k? I mean, I thought you were 'The Master' here?"
I ease back in my chair. I slide it back a little, still facing her. 
"Nothing, Kar! They got nothing. I mean, if they got the resident script from RAM they can determine how SOME of it works, They can't track the deposit accounts because that stuff couldn't be logged. I've already said any trace of activity...This is all s**t worked out long ago, Kar. It's worked, what, a couple of dozen times? No problems! This is safe code. They can't connect anything to us or anyone. The only thing we lose is...well...unless..."
Kar has now turned, knees pressed together and bent a little. Head is up and arms wave at the elbows. 
"Thom!"
"What!"
"...unless...WHAT!"
I splay my legs and throw down my arms. I look to places on the floor that don't look like Kar.
"Well, if they caught it running before it sent to an account they would certainly be able to see where - what bank - it went, if they were tipped off by another large account it created. Then all they have to do is talk to...that bank."
I wave my hands a final time and twirl out of my slumped self on that chair.
"The money? We can't get to the money? How can we get to the accounts if they know where it's going?"
"Kar, you don't actually think we can get the dollars after all this, do you?"
"Well, Thom, then what's the point of all this?"
"Kar, we're gonna be lucky if we can get out of this..."
Kar slams a tight right fist into the air.
"Hmmggghhh! You said 'there's no way they can catch us', Thom!"
"Not from my work, Kar. Not up to now. Not unless we go for the money. They can't track my entry. They can't trace anything to us. That's how I built the code. That how I do things."
"What? How?"
"To live to fight another day."
Kar raises her arms to the sky, shaking her head about.
"Oh, that's cute, Thom!"
"I'm not trailing this money if it means getting arrested or killed, Kar."
"Jesus, Thom. You said there's tens of thousands in accounts."
"F**k the money, Kar. The code did what it...I code things...we do things just like this just so we can avoid being detected."
"You and Ben?"
"Ben, me. Hell, even you, Kar. What gives? We have a bigger problem here. Let's gt out of this and then maybe go after the accounts."
"When?"
"Later."
"Later? The money won't be there later, Thom."
"It will be if they can't find it, Kar.
"Then let's go! Lets look. You have some of the destinations, I know the routing codes, the FedWire access..."
I hang my head, take two small steps back and prop my self up tall with my hand on the rounded sofa-back.
"I'm not gonna do it now, Kar."
"What! You're this big-time hacker all bent on technique and 'skills' and this pumped-up operating code created by Ben, who, need I remind you probably engineered this whole thing. He probably set all this up knowing exactly what you would do; that you wouldn't go for the money." He can roll in and..."
"He's not going to 'roll in' and take anything."
Her hands make like they're choking me, but three-feet in front of me.
"Aarrrrg! How can you...you don't have the cubes to follow through on anything if there's even the slightest amount of risk."
"If he did all this AND he's good enough to get the funds, he could have set us up, too. All they need is for us to access one of the accounts. Or didn't you think of that, Kar.? God, am I glad you're only the 'account specialist'."
"What? Why?"
"You don't have the skills to do a job like this right."
I turn towards my gear, slap the brown sorry hotel-room coffee-cup off the table, open my bag and shove it all in. I zip it in one quick, loud motion.
"They're MY ACCOUNTS, Thom. I scoped them. I prepped them. I know where they money..."
"Yeah? If you're so good, why didn't you see it had a feeder, Kar?"
Out the door to the elevator, I crash for a little while in the lobby, pack locked to my ankle. I had to nap - take sixty. I awaken with that fuzzy-numb haze and wet-lens myopia, temporarily unaware of when or where I am. The hotel, right. Kar. S**t, I hope she's cool. A few steps later I lean a head into the hotel restaurant and there is Kar, poking at something on a round table with a fork, gaze at her plate. Head hanging in my right hand, I slump towards her, sit down sideways in the chair opposite her and stare off to her left.
"They have WIFI here?"
"Hmmm? Yes."
"You know the accounts, Kar. I have the parsing code. We...we still have a problem to solve, Kar."
I don't know if Kar's looking at me or not but the fork-on-plate sounds have stopped.
"I know. I have all my gear, Thom. Figure we should work here and not the room. Different NICs, right?"
"Right. Who said you didn't have skills?"
We do a little recon on her system. I have all my debug and the Screemer post on USB so we don't have to hit it again online. We figure if Ben set us up maybe he's working with another crew that can actually do all the stuff that's happened to us including trapping board messages or hacking transit and lodging servers to know where we are. That means we don't know who or what we're up against. We have to go for Ben, though. Maybe that's a lame play if he was played by true hackers or Feds or whatever, but he's not gonna want to go down. We have to make him the fall guy. We can't just turn him in. We have to trash him - fatten his third-self thin. He'll be out of moves and at least he can't touch us. Then us? Have to think about that one.
    "Maybe HERE we have..."
    "Thom?"
    "Maybe...no. I don't know. I don't know how to find the account. I have all Ben's sigs here. I'm looking over logs, transcripts...nothing, yet."
    "Kar pokes with her fork at the soggy bloated bits of pancake on her plate. Nothing sticks. She pokes faster, adding a scooping motion, then kind of drops the grey plastic utensil next to her plate.
    "OK. You're sure this is going to work " you have what you need on Ben?"
    "Yeah. I have all the proof I need.”
I start breaking down gear. That nap gave me new life. I gotta walk around. Maybe grab a burrito or sandwich somewheres. No, Thom. Stick to the plan. You gotta follow through. You just need a little more time to...
    It's like nine AM. Where are we...going?"
    "We...We can't finish this here. Last piece of the puzzle. We have to leave Charlotte. Just close by. We've been here too long."
    "Where?"
    "Lets head to Salisbury. First stop on the Carolinian line. Rail. Forty-five-minute ride. WIFI. I can code this package, you can look for the account. What we don't finish on the train we can do at a coffee hole in Salisbury."
    I walk a little ahead of Kar after we leave Charlotte Transit for the Tryon Street Train Station. I've been on this line to Salisbury before. It runs late, the power's iffy and WIFI blinks out sometimes. But it's just what I need right now. 
I feel like this is all I have ever done in my life. I'm not getting philosophical here - right now the only s**t in my head is what I've been doing since I was last here setting up the skim. Heads hurting, again. It's quieter out here but by no means quiet. I'm under in calories, I can feel that. Bathed, but sadly stretching to day two in he same clothes. Hanging with a smokin' hot gal like Kar but not really able to do anything about it, like I could if things were going better here. Pisses me off, though. In a few hours I have to say 'bye' to ever knowing Kar existed, I'd have screwed over Ben, I won't have any more money and I'm probably going to have to begin thinking about how to disappear again.
    Morning Train number 80. A few slowdowns. Power problems, they say on the news. I heard it this morning. I've sat on this thing dead on it's tracks before. Today we're thirty-five minutes in. Kar hanging out, not to close to me, index-finger knuckle in her mouth, eyes darting about. Her system is idle " I have he checking for any more Screemer updates. Just a few more minutes to to verify my code, the sigs, and package all this info. No biggie. Don't fail yet. But please fail. May have to delay. Train is almost in station. Finish here, log out before forty-five, hit one more hot-spot to pack the code and email...
    "What the...?"
The lights on the train fade a little. We slow to a jerky stop. Message up on the wall by the door and in the air as a caramel-synthetic female:
   
          "Attention. Attention. A track problem requires we stop for an indeterminate amount of time. We will continue on route as soon as possible. Thank you.
    "Knew it."
    "Thom..."
    "Kar...we...it's almost done verifying. I could send pretty much now but as it is we gotta log out now before we can finish."
    "OK. We'll wait this out, disembark, find a hot-spot. No rush, right?"
"I don't know, Kar. I don't feel safer by the minute, if you know what I mean. You wanna wait another half-hour?"
Kar is sliding a fingertip all over the mouse sensor in a crazy scribble. With raised eyebrows she looks at me.
“Can I help? Can I do it?”
    "Kar, umount your USBs and phone. Drop the WIFI. We should be able to do this in half a minute."
    "Thom?"
    "We're finishing here. DON'T logout or shutdown. We can get the same tokens if we only drop for thirty seconds."
    I umount my peripherals, kill my WIFI then pull the plug to the power. CPU goes to half-clock. I turn my little netbook towards Kar.
    "Here. Give me yours. I'll log in to yours. Use mine."
    Kar's mouth is open in almost a perfect circle. Eyes look locked in place. I reach for the display on her book and carefully twist it towards me.
    "Use mine. Log into mine. Load your peripherals. We'll beat the forty-five by switching systems."
Kar looks like I'm speaking Mandarin or some such s**t. She's not the tech one here, I know. Be cool.
    "Sig and crypt will change, Thom?"
    Kar's eyes flatten and look down. Hands begin to move."
    "Yes. Only a little, though. If they unwrap it they may just see what's going on. But with what looks like a different CPU and different conditions you on mine and me on yours look like a couple of different people." 
“Ummm...”
“I'm packaged on my USB. Here...”
    "OK, Thom."
    Odd system here but I load my code and copy her machine state to backup for later. Kara twists her head, peering closly at the screen. I have up an xterm building a zipped tarball and filemanager on my USB. I hit 'Enter' and a little progress bar counts up from zero slowly to one-hundred. Really slow. At about ten-percent the train jerks to life and rolls slowly into the station. Ten-percent in five minutes is thirty minutes to completion.
“When it builds I'll load Ben's package to USB. We'll set up at a WIFI spot I know I can hack into. Then we can send. 
    JavaHead on Sharon Place. Coffee sucks and they make you pay for WIFI. They just don't want the roaming masses to settle in their little shop. And it works. Place is dead. People are READING here. Print reading. Not even outlets. Thank God for eight-hour lithiums. 
    "Are you finished, Thom?"
    "Almost, Kar."
    I can work faster on my own keyboard. Almost...
"And when you send this...that's it."
    "I glance at Kar pulling the corner of my mouth towards her.
    "That's it, Kar. Now this takes care of Ben but doesn't do anything about the money. We have no idea where where it all went...yet. But that's next."
      Kar squats down on the ground to my right. I bring the xterm session handling sendmail front and center. One keystroke and the whole package goes.
      "Ready?"
      "Yes."
      "Really? Because if you..."
      "Thom, send it. We need to be done with this."
             ...
      Return Status 1
Connection closed
    Done. Sorry, friend. Your sig, your crypt, even your gear. Next time you log in, open an email, turn on a phone, they'll know where you are. They don't know WHO you are in real life, I gave you THAT much, but your third-self will be dead because it will lead the feds or whoever right to you. You will need a whole new identity not built on anything you already are. And who's gonna help you when you can only promise money you don't know is even there.
"Done, Kar. I hope to s**t he can live in peace and leave us the f**k alone."
    "Everything on him is in there, Thom."
    "That, and backup, yeah."
"Perfect."
"Kar? What?"
Kar stands up, both hands at her sides. As she slides them up her legs, her fingers open, elbows propped out wide. Her right knee juts forward, the left leg turns out.
"Thank you, Thom. And as much as I would like to keep this going, I do have to let you know we won't be working on finding the accounts."
I hit Control-Alt-L. Screen lock. I rise to my feet too, not as elegantly but with what I feel is the same purpose and determination.
"What do you mean, Kar?"
"I'll give you one piece of advice Thom - walk away, You won't get burned, but, then again, you won't get anything."
As I palm my phone from the edge of the table I press the "#" sign - no ringer. Phone in my left palm, I cross my right hand over it and let it rest on my upper right thigh.
    "So predictable, Thom. So methodical. Put you on a task and you deliver. Your problem is, you don't often think about what you're actually doing. You really saved me, Thom."
I find it really really difficult to look into Kar's eyes right now but know I have to. I shift my weight to my right foot, clear my throat and lift my head a little.
"Wha..Kar? What?"
    "Come on...I scope and prep accounts."
Now I swallow in slow-motion. I think back to that sleepless night in the motel, staring at the edges of shadows and looking to the ceiling for some kind of answer in the lumpy, swirly plaster. Damn.
"It wasn't Ben, Thom. You yourself said he couldn't do all this. Who do you think hired that girl to play Crey?"
    "Ben didn't hire her or gave her a story about a movie..."
    "That was me, Thom. Geeze"
Sometimes you should follow your instincts even if they seem wrong. 
"Come on, Thom. Ben did his part as 'co-star'. But every actor needs an agent, right Thom?"
Then there are the things you couldn't understand at the time that make so much sense later on.
    "And the call...the 'modem-y' call as you like to say? I made that. Just wanted to distract you - like throwing a crazed, single-minded dog a bone. I didn't want Crey to ever have the opportunity to tie me to the person that hired her. Worked. She split."
Everything I had thought of - Kar suggesting Charlotte, Kar arriving just after Crey takes off. Even Kar making that modem phone all to let her walk away. She knew I'd just tune out the gal once I heard a modem.
    "One question, Kar. How'd you know Crey would clue us in that Ben hired her, you know, on the recording?"
    "That? That night in the motel, you almost had it all figured out. You were ready to run on me. I needed another bone - the same bone as it turned out. The Crey-tip-off-thing was dumb luck, that and quick-thinking on my part. You had Ben as the bad-guy already. I thought it made for a more evil Ben with more smarts than either of us thought. And it fucked things up in your mind even more, didn't it?"
Kar swings the left edge of her netbook towards her and begins typing while standing up. One thing I knew even before three days ago is that Kar is the accounts person. If any of us had hidden anything Kar could find it. If she had set us up, she would be the only one ever able to get to the accounts. Everything she needed was on her computer and while she's incredible organized and fast with her hands she's a little slow technically. Not much encryption, no disk images, straight-up file names. I lean to my left just a little to watch her Hot tech fingers blaze through righteous code for the last time. 
"I have something of my own to send, Thom. To myself. To some offshore accounts."
It's times like these that make me wish I had done the right thing more often.
    "I wouldn't hit enter if I were you, Kar."
Kar doesn't even look up. Still typing.
    "Hmmm? Why not, Thom? You have some final plea or plan that that I'm not possible interested in hearing."
    "No, Kar. No. If I were you I would think back to the train, the delayed train. I really lucked out on that one."
"What, building the package, the train stalls..."
    Kar lightly drags her hands back off the tiny keyboard. Her face slows down; it looks like plastic melting in reverse.
    "Go on. And we needed to jump before forty online..."
    "We...swapped...gear. We swapped computers. Oh, s**t. You KNEW!?"
I can't help sneaking a little look at my phone.
"You grabbed my sigs, Thom? My crypt? But how could you use them? You said they were different..."
    "Yeah, well...I core-dumped the stagnant net session before I went back online. I got enough, though, enough with that and your logs to upload to an FBI drop."
  Her face cracks. Eyes bulge and mouth opens. "Jesus, Thom. What kind of...but if you have mine, I have yours, Thom. I can f**k you..."
    I have to smirk. She hasn't thought this through, not a bit. "Shadow sigs, Kar. Look like Ben's. And anyway, sending without getting online? You don't even have the skills - you 'scope and prep accounts', Kar. Good luck finding someone who can. I'm betting you can't."
    "Ben..."
"He...I don't know. I don't care if he's working with you. Guess he was but he can't touch the money. I figure, and I'm actually thinking here, that even IF he was working with you, you were the brains and he'd get dumped anyways. He's not gonna help you."
    Kar turns and pulls her hands flat into the front of her legs. Her head dips slightly and I hear her make a little 'oh' sound. 
    "When?"
    "When, what?"
    "When did you know?"
    "Well, like I said earlier on, I had doubts, that night I was gonna run. But I couldn't be sure until..."
    My phone vibes. I look down at it in my right hand. I hit the message key with my right middle finger and thumb-scroll to the new message, the package sent from the computer over bluetooth to my phone. Menu key and more scrolling lets me 'Forward' the mail to my newest Address Book entry, the cybercrime tip line of the FBI.
    "...now."
    As I hit 'Enter' for the second dramatic time in the past two minutes, Kar's eyes widen so much I see them before she turns her head towards me. "What? What did you just...you b*****d! You just NOW sent..."
    "Yeah. This time the internet - WIFI. It's gone. Anonymous MAC, too."
    Kar lunges at me. Looks like one of those lion things online - greatest pissed-off animals or something. I jump back a little.  She doesn't reach me since we have a table between us but she looks a little serious. I better be going. 
    "You F**K! God-DAMN why didn't I dump you earlier? Why the f**k didn't I..."
I glance back at the table. My gear. 
    "I don't know. You have something to prove, you like drama..." I motion at her direction with my cellphone hand. "You got this whole mil-attack-femme thing going on that, though interesting and cool...just...it's over, Kar. It's over."
Once again she turns as if snub me. Her left hand delicately closes her netbook. She taps twice at her ruby-red Metro cellphone with a sturdy green-enameled nail. In one step I'm at the table, left hand on the computer, pulling at it like I know it's stuck to the table with a million pounds of glue. By the time her head turns and I can see her right eye I'm back by my gear.
She just stands there.
    Kar winces her face then looks to her left, I don't wait. I shove the phone into my pack and both notebooks go high up under my arm. "You won't need it."
    The fuzzy blond clobber of hair bobs to her right. Her head turns a little more and that stony face has the eyes of anger and the mouth of a good cry. I walk backwards a few steps, check out the table and floor for any of my s**t then turn and walk rather briskly to the door. 
I hit concrete and there's road to the left and to the right of me. Either way is good, as long as I keep moving. I gotta do that for a while, at least. Maybe find another job or get transferred. Kar can't get online maybe ever again, at least not in a way that can threaten me. Ben...I gotta stay away from him, too. The money, if there's money, Kar would know where. Her computer knows where. She had to be siphoning off funds from the skim. I'll find them. I'll take them all. Then maybe I'll disappear, too. Get a decent lunch for once.

© 2014 Phil Macias


My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register




Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Request Read Request
Add to Library My Library
Subscribe Subscribe


Stats

190 Views
Added on July 22, 2014
Last Updated on July 22, 2014

Author

Phil Macias
Phil Macias

Princeton, NJ



About
I am a published author of short-stories in the genre of speculative fiction. more..

Writing