-15-

Casper thought he'd chosen well. The beastly Baalz, Davy Crockett edition Trailblazer had a heavy frame, high-impact cages over the tinted windows, a light-absorbent, badass, matte black coating, and a circular sunroof that was really a hatch more appropriate to a combat vehicle. The Baalz SUV was a German design, but they'd made it to market to wealthy, ethanol-burning American corporate executives, who lusted to go off-road, and maybe, if they were lucky, crush something furry and cute.

In an age of fuel-saving, lightweight alloys and compact design, it was stubbornly wide and heavy. This one had several enhancements from the Davy Crockett options package, that were designed to turn any vegetation-choked terrain it faced into dirt roads with only some minor weeds and stumps remaining to challenge the lesser cars that followed it. “If you were driving behind a beastly Baalz Trailblazer,” the slogan went, “then you were never off-road.”

Half the SUV's on the road tried to imitate the beastly Baalz. There were a million matte black, cage-windowed SUVs in Baccha Bay City so Casper didn't think it was as inconspicuous as Catherine had complained. Alvin dug it. Bonnie hadn't said a word about his Baalz, and Casper didn't know why that disappointed him. He was behind the wheel of a Baalz Trailblazer; why should he care what anyone thought?

Catherine Whitman said she needed a place they could connect to FragNet, then kill a couple hours. She said it had to be a discrete place, and Casper knew a perfect one.

Mrs. Murphy's Chinese Theater had risen from the inferno that consumed it a decade ago. They'd rebuilt on the same lot, and transformed from conventional indoor porno theater and sex emporium to narrow, open-air, drive-in theater showing porn on three, five-story, AniLux coated brick walls, while the admission-paying prostitutes solicited kino-lovers in their parked vehicles.

Mrs. Murphy's Chinese Theater hadn't been run by a Murphy for thirty years, and it never had anything Chinese about it. Thai, yes. Korean, yes. Polish, sure. Nigerian Minnesotans, you betcha'!

The owners had stretched two layers of foil laced, orange plastic, construction-safety netting over the whole parking lot to protect the clientèle and the sex-workers from prying electronic eyes as well as the occasional brick thrown from the rooftops of adjoining buildings or grenade tossed from the street. The wrath of Goddies was everywhere, even outside Mrs. Murphy's Chinese Theater.

The front was protected by a thick, metal-plated brick wall with a sliding, green-painted, metal door, operated by a hand cranked, geared chain and pulley system. Over the wall, Bonnie could see Hi-5's top half doing, either a very repetitive bit of choreography or, more likely, another celebrity. She was walking blasphemy and very few Morituri Catholic insurgents were capable of watching her without looking visibly nauseated. Bonnie liked that. It was useful.

Casper pulled the Baalz across the sidewalk with the SUV's nose inches from the sliding door while a turgid-veined, over-muscled bouncer turned a five-foot diameter wheel. Amidst the sound of engaging cogs and ungreased chains, the crudely welded, metal door slid to the right to let them enter as three additional, steroid-pumped bouncers watched a car they genuinely coveted pull into their domain. “That's the Baalz, bra,” a light-skinned, jerry-curled Hercules remarked to his bouncer coworker.

“It sure is, bra. That Baalz is beefed-up Bad-Ass like Auto-motive At-las,” agreed an equally herculean, dark-skinned bouncer.

Inside Mrs. Murphy's, the parking spaces were in rows of five, with yards of space between them, and lanes on either side. Casper parked the Baalz on the outside edge of the third row from the door, in an extra-large space where a limo had just pulled out. The working girls, boys, and thirds were already beginning to display themselves for the newcomers, parading around the vehicle in a circle while displaying whatever they thought might sell. Casper advised, “Keep the windows up unless you feel like... uh...”

“Gettin' some?” Alvin said. To Alvin, who was relatively sure he was going to die, if not today then tomorrow, it seemed like a fine idea, but he doubted Bonnie and Catherine would let him out if their sight. He asked anyway, just to be sure. “You guys mind if I stretch my legs?”

“Nobody's going anywhere,” Catherine replied, patting the pink pistol in her lap. Alvin, looking at the pink gun couldn't restrain a snicker. Nodding towards the obvious symbol in her lap, he asked, “Do you know who Sigmund Freud is, nice lady?”

“You're lucky my stun-pen is out of juice, Mr. Buddha.” She smiled her thin-lipped smile at him, and Alvin was sure that if she knew him by that name then he wasn't going anywhere. He reached down with both hands to unzip his pants, “Well, if you need some juice, then I've got an stun-pen for y-”

“Okay,” Bonnie interrupted, “FragNet? You said you needed to connect to FragNet?”

Catherine was suddenly distracted, staring at the right hand, AniLux wall, where a naked, buxom Japanese woman stood in front of a mirror having an argument with a second manifestation of her own face that, thanks to special effects, had replaced her entire pubic region. It berated her until she contorted and gave it a kiss. Catherine wished Alvin hadn't mentioned Freud. “What? Yes, I'll need a mobile device... and I don't have a headset either.”

“The car's got a gaming link,” Casper enthusiastically chimed, “We can hook up to FragNet, and project on the windshield if you don't mind 2D, but...” Casper remembered that, with the network jammer working to dampen the Baalz' anti-theft beacon, the car's network link wouldn't work. He wanted to keep the existence of Carlos's jammer to himself, but he'd already said too much.

“But what? What's the problem?” Bonnie asked, sensing more than just gamer snobbery about 2D fragging. “Did you rip the gaming link out along with the anti-theft beacon?”

Casper decided these folks weren't about to turn him in. “Well, I didn't exactly rip out the beacon.” he admitted, “I don't know the Baalz systems that well, and I didn't want to rip out the wrong shit and kill the car so...”

“Oh my, please, Ms. Aziz,” Catherine said, “Tell me this ridiculous parody of a car hasn't been squawking our location over the network for the last half hour. Exactly how many cars have you stolen successfully?”

“It's cool, it's cool... we're cool,” Casper said, reaching for the tactical-flavored, black man-purse shoulder bag he still wore, “because I've been jamming with this baby.” He flipped the flap back and withdrew an eight inch square, two inch deep, black metal box, and he was happy to see that its single, green LED was blinking. It was blinking annoyingly slow, but it was blinking, indicating that the network jammer was still operating. He held it up for them to admire, and their reactions were even more non-plussed than his own when Otis had introduced it to him hours ago. Casper felt like that must have happened a week ago, at least.

Catherine asked, “And that is...”

“It's an adaptive jammer,” Casper said with pride. They didn't look impressed. Casper remembered how Otis had described it and tried explaining it that way, “This here is one frequency scannin', real-time packet decoding, signals cancellation mutherfucker.” The LED blinked slowly, and they all stared blankly at him.

“And that means what, exactly?” Bonnie asked, even though she actually had some idea what he'd said.

Casper said it plainly. “It blocks outgoing signals, signals like anti-theft beacons... and the network gaming link in this car, so we can't connect to FragNet.”

“So, we can't connect to FragNet next to that thing, and if we turn it off the cops find us,” Catherine said. From the displeasure in her voice, it was obvious that she understood the problem.

Alvin didn't care; he was busy staring at hookers.

Bonnie looked at the jammer with a knit brow. She was trying to figure out who's it really was. It was obviously a piece of custom hardware, but Casper didn't seem the type to stay up late soldering, testing, and foregoing the sex and drugs that people who did this kind of work never had time for. “Last time I checked, car thieves had crash-spoofers, jump-boards, or maybe a Locko Loco decoder,” Bonnie said. Casper smiled, reached into his pocket, and held up the cigarette-pack-sized Locko Loco that he'd used to open the door on the Lenz and the Baalz, but Bonnie wasn't finished worrying. “Isn't this jammer a little, I dunno,” she paused before continuing, “...hardcore for you?”

Casper wanted Bonnie to take him for hardcore, and the fact that she didn't stung a little. “I'm hardcore,” he protested, “I'm hardcore like a gang war.” At least that made her laugh.

“Excuse me,” Bonnie restated with more specificity, “Isn't that a little hardcore Geek for you?”

“Oh... Yeah... Well, I didn't make it. A friend did.” Casper's admission elicited glances of unspoken concern between Bonnie and Catherine. “Don't worry,” he said, “this is some quality gear.”

“How do you know,” Catherine asked, “that there isn't a tracker in it?” She was suspicious of all electronics because if you couldn't see what was going on inside, then just holding it in your hand was an act of blind trust. Catherine wasn't too big on blind trust.

Casper didn't want to tell them Carlos made it, so he only said, “'Cause trackers are just not my friend's style... really... trust me on that one. He's really into privacy, 'ya know?”

Alvin laughed and said, “Everything contains its opposite, kid.”

“The guy who made this.... he's... he's not like that. He's a hacker; he sells privacy. He wouldn't do anything like that.”

Alvin laughed louder, and looking Casper between the eyes suggested, “Imagine a coin, kid. Privacy is one side of the coin, and Snoopin' in other peoples business is on the other side. The coin itself is called Secrets, and your friend is into Secrets, see. Protecting 'em, knowing 'em, it don't matter. You're just seeing one side of the coin.”

Alvin looked out the window at the circle of service workers, and stared straight through a pair of purple-nippled breasts being pressed against the Baalz's caged window. His eyes looked focused on something far away, something far beyond the girl outside the Baalz's tinted glass, and he added, “Shit, I don't know... don't listen to me, kid, I don't know shit.”

Fuckin' Goddies, Casper thought. Even they don't know what they're talkin about.

“There's no point in worrying about it,” Bonnie reasoned. “Until we can get a very old car, something we know is clean, we need that jammer or this stupid stolen SUV is gonna drop a dime on us over the network and bitch to the cops about being stolen.”

Casper trusted the jammer, he trusted Otis, and he was sick of all this paranoid crap. “Hey,” he offered, “me and the jammer would be happy to take a walk,” adding, “I got plenty of other places to hide out.”

“No, Casper Grey,” Bonnie said, “you really don't. Really. I'd give you ten, maybe twelve blocks, walking the streets before they'd be on you. Any more than that, and it's because they think you're one of us, and they're waiting to see who you lead 'em to.”

“And,” Catherine said flatly, “if you think we'd let you walk, you're dumber than you look.”

Casper looked insulted, and said, “What, like I'm gonna snitch on you guys? No fuckin' way, not my style.”

“It's not hard to imagine,” Catherine said, “that a kid like you would be eager to trade a few insurgents to local enforcement, for the shiny promise of dropped grand theft auto charges and a second chance. You're staying with us, Casper Grey.” Catherine added some butter, “Besides, your skill set is quite useful. We might even be able to give you a job.”

Casper didn't want whatever job they had. He just wanted to go home and have a bong hit. He sighed and looked away, towards the main AniLux wall where Hi-5 and an unlicensed recreation of Ron the Hedgehog double-teamed a nurse who was delivering a pizza.

Casper remembered the jade bowl. He put his hands in his jacket pockets. His left hand found the bowl, and his right hand found a lighter. He thought, Fuck, yeah.

“FragNet,” Bonnie said, “Let's stay on track.”

Casper withdrew both hands at the same time, and before anyone could say anything he had a lit bowl at his lips, and he inhaled. There were vaporized trichomes and smoke in his lungs, and almost instantaneously the cannabinoids were in his blood, and in his brain and... It Was Good. What are they gonna do, he thought, holding the smoke in, shoot me?

Alvin forgot the faraway place he'd been staring at when he saw Casper light up, and then Casper heard Alvin's voice speak a decidedly out-of-place, reassuringly familiar phrase, “Hey, Casper... can I get a hit or two off that bad boy?”