Intemperance IX - the Inner Circle
Copyright© 2025 by Al Steiner
Chapter 23: What a Lucky Man He Was
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 23: What a Lucky Man He Was - The ninth book in the long-running Intemperance series finds Jake Kingsley balancing family, music, and media chaos as his world grows stranger—and more fiercely loyal—by the day. With fame fading and life deepening, the Kingsleys and their inner circle face new challenges in love, trust, and the price of peace.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa BiSexual Fiction
The Campus, outside Atascadero, California
September 23, 2004
The catered lunch had arrived at 12:29, as always—salads, sandwiches, pasta trays, and whatever miracle vegan option Charlie had guilted the catering service into perfecting that week. Today it was some kind of quinoa-stuffed bell pepper that smelled like a mixture of airport waiting room and cumin. Charlie hovered near the table, inspecting the containers with a plastic fork and a narrowed eye, mumbling about protein ratios and digestive flora like a scientist reviewing evidence at a crime scene.
“I’m not saying it’s unsafe,” he said, “but bell peppers are one of the most bacterially penetrable vegetables when stored under inconsistent refrigeration.”
Sharon didn’t look up from her salad. “Then don’t eat it, Charlie.”
“I have to eat it,” he said. “I emailed them specific macros. If I don’t eat it, I can’t log the data. If I can’t log the data, the experiment fails.”
“What experiment?” asked Jake from across the table, dunking his French dip sandwich into a styrofoam container of au jus.
“The one where I determine if I can reset my gut biome by eliminating all cooked starches for twenty-one days.”
Jake shook his head. “You realize you’re the only person alive who makes Nerdly seem normal, right?”
From the kitchenette area, Laura sipped iced tea and laughed. “No, don’t say that. If Nerdly hears it, he’ll take it as a challenge.”
“I’m not competing with Charlie,” Nerdly said, entering with a paper plate loaded with cold pasta salad and a roast beef sandwich without cheese, his face neutral. “He has an entirely different dysfunction profile.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Charlie said.
“And yet still unaware,” Laura replied.
Nerdly took a seat beside Sharon, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt like they were interfering with his logic. “Anyway, as I was saying before lunch arrived—fence work is on schedule. The camera team starts tomorrow. Jose connected me with a cleanup crew from his church, and they’ve already tackled the side yard and cleared the oak leaf clusters along the slope. I’m bringing in a drywall and flooring team next week to start phase one of the interior work. With any luck, we’ll be out of your guest suite by mid-November.”
“Optimistic,” Sharon murmured without looking up.
Jake glanced over, chewing. “What happened to January?”
Nerdly hesitated, then wiped his mouth with a napkin and spoke with exaggerated calm. “It became apparent to me that a mid-November move-out might better suit the ... rhythm of household dynamics.”
Laura raised an eyebrow. “You mean we are getting on your nerves?”
“Not at all,” Nerdly said quickly. “Your home is generous. Accommodating. Structurally efficient. You are remarkably good hosts.”
Sharon finally looked up, pinning him with the kind of patient stare only a long-married woman can deliver. “He’s trying to get us out early because he thinks we’re a burden on you.”
Jake leaned back in his chair. “You’re not a burden—per se. We just want our guest suite back before I die of old age.”
Laura swatted him gently. “You said January was fine.”
“It is fine,” Sharon said, still watching her husband. “Bill’s the one who suddenly decided we need to fast-track.”
“I did not decide,” Nerdly said stiffly. “I merely reevaluated the timeline in light of new logistical efficiencies.”
“You mean guilt,” Sharon said.
“I mean awareness,” he corrected.
Laura looked amused. “Bill. We love you. We love Sharon. We love Kelvin. But the house has limits. We’re not mad. Just ... ready.”
“And we’re not dragging you out by your spreadsheets,” Jake added. “You’ve got until January. Stick to the plan.”
Sharon gave Nerdly a gentle nudge with her elbow. “We’ll move out while they’re in New Zealand over the holiday break. Just like we discussed. Our new house will be livable, fully secured, and wired up by then. Right?”
Nerdly gave a slow nod, staring into the middle distance. “Yes. That timeline is acceptable. The security systems will be operational, basic furnishing will be in place, and we will have transitioned to independent meal planning.”
Charlie, still chewing with clinical detachment, added, “You’ll also want to schedule a whole-house antimicrobial fogging before any mattress installs. There are fungi that thrive in abandoned HVAC ductwork. Some of them are airborne. Some of them are named.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” Nerdly said without emotion. “I actually do have a thorough professional cleaning of the ductwork scheduled for next Thursday at nine of the clock.”
“Have you vetted the cleaners for any association with the government?” Charlie asked.
“Of course,” Nerdly lied without missing a beat. “What do you take me for, a tool of the oppressive cabal that rules us all from behind the scene?”
“I heard that cabal is all Jews,” Coop said from around a bite of his club sandwich.
Nerdly sighed. “For the last time, Coop. We Jews do not secretly rule the world. If we did, we’d be doing a much better job of it.”
Coop thought that one over for a moment and then nodded. “That’s a good point, Nerdly,” he said. “You Jews are pretty shrewd.”
“Of course we are,” Nerdly said. “We are the chosen people.”
At that moment, Matt wandered in from the hallway with a half-eaten cookie in one hand and a smirk that had clearly been earned doing something vaguely illegal. He made no move toward the food table—he was just there for the chaos.
“So,” he said casually, “is this new pad of yours gonna have a dedicated gash room?”
Sharon’s eyes looked at the guitarist. “A ‘gash room’?”
“Fuck yeah,” Matt said enthusiastically. “The room where you do your serious fucking and sucking and threesomes and foursomes and shit.” He turned to Nerdly. “You know you’re thinking about this shit, bro. I’ve been out on tour with you. You got ten fuckin’ acres and a big motherfuckin’ house sitting there all by itself. No fuckin’ neighbors. No one to listen in on your gash sessions. You have to set aside one little guest suite for a proper gash room to get your fuck-o-rama on. I’m talkin’ mirrored ceiling, shag carpet, double king fuckin’ bed, artsy paintings of naked bitches dyking out hanging on the fuckin’ walls, and those cheap-ass polyester sheets that soak up fuck juices like a goddamn mop until the fuckin’ help comes and wrings that shit out in the yard.”
“There will be no ‘gash room’ in the Nerdly Compound,” Sharon said firmly, stabbing her fork into her salad with precision.
Matt cocked his head. “Okay, I can see how the name could offend some people. But you have to call it something, right? How about something bitch friendly? The Boom-Boom Bungalow? Slutquarters? The Department of Boning and Internal Affairs?”
Jake held up a hand. “Wait. I’ve got one—The Whoreatorium.”
Laura shook her head. “Classy.”
Charlie, still hovering near the fridge, chimed in without turning. “The Microbial Splash Zone.”
Everyone at the table recoiled slightly.
Matt pointed at Charlie. “That’s why you don’t get to name shit.”
Sharon looked to Nerdly, who hadn’t said a word through the entire exchange. “Please confirm that you have no plans for our house to have anything even remotely analogous to a ‘gash room’.”
“Confirmed,” Nerdly said mildly, buttering a roll. “All recreational intercourse will occur within the bounds of the primary bedroom suite. Possibly the guest room, if we’re feeling spontaneous.”
“What about the laundry room?” Laura asked. “It does have a door on it and that cool chair. You know, something to do while you’re waiting for the laundry to finish?”
“The cleaning service does the laundry,” Nerdly said. “There is no reason for us to assume a position of repose in the laundry room.
Matt looked vaguely disappointed. “Y’all are so fuckin’ vanilla. If I had a hilltop fortress, I’d have a whole fuckin’ harem wing. Light dimmers in the headboards. Mood lighting. Pussy-scented candles. The works.”
“You live with a paramedic and a drummer,” Jake reminded him.
“Temporarily,” Matt said.
“Keep talking like that,” Sharon said, standing and gathering her lunch trash, “and you’ll be sleeping in Charlie’s mold-resistant guest pod next time we go on tour.”
Matt shrugged. “Long as there’s gash in it.”
Sharon didn’t answer. She just left the room, muttering something under her breath that included the word “degenerate.”
Jake stood and clapped his hands once. “Well, break time’s over. Let’s go yell about guitars and overdubs and shit instead of gash rooms.”
Matt followed, licking cookie crumbs from his thumb. “I’m bringin’ my porn energy with me.”
Jake didn’t turn around. “Bring your riff composition skills too. We’ll need those.”
Coop, watching him go, leaned over to Nerdly. “You sure you don’t want a gash room?”
“I’m sure,” Nerdly said. “Though I do admit... ‘Whoreatorium’ has a certain architectural symmetry to it.”
Studio A had that calm-before-the-bullshit stillness as the band filed back in from lunch. Sharon wasn’t with them—she was across the hall in Studio B, wrangling rhythm tracks for Celia’s new album. That left Jake, Nerdly, Coop, Charlie, and Matt to handle the afternoon session, backed by two techs borrowed from the Cal Poly Audio Engineering post-grad program—Marcus and Elena. Both were sharp, competent, and respected by every bandmember, even Matt, which was saying something. They didn’t have nicknames. They didn’t need them.
Owen, on the other hand, did.
He was now known—exclusively, relentlessly—as GM, short for Gash-Master. The title had been bestowed upon him by Matt Tisdale himself, not as a joke, but as a badge of hard-earned respect. After all, Owen was boning Tif—the same Tif who had shut Matt down so hard it still echoed through the hallways of The Campus. To Matt, that kind of pull deserved reverence.
GM had been adopted quickly and universally by the band. Owen didn’t love it, but he didn’t protest either. Not because he was proud of the name, but because Matt had also taken him under his wing in the way only Matt could—by trying to teach him every disgusting, manipulative sex tactic he’d ever developed in his long, depraved career. Secrets, Matt claimed, that separated the mortals from the gods.
Owen listened. He always listened. He even took mental notes, mostly out of morbid curiosity. But he would never, ever act on any of it. He couldn’t imagine just blurting out to Tif that he wanted to fuck her ass in the same breath as he started working his cock (“always pre-lube for this,” Matt instructed) into the orifice in question—”so you got plausible deniability if she objects, bro”—as Matt had earnestly explained last week over burritos.
It was like watching a dog whisperer work with crocodiles.
GM just nodded a lot and hoped Matt never asked for a demonstration. A PowerPoint would be okay though. It would be fun just searching for the proper illustrations.
Owen took his place with the two Cal Poly techs at the console—a position that had evolved from “guy who brings snacks” to “guy who gets to sit in the chair now, but only if he doesn’t touch the wrong buttons.” He had been formally instructed by Sharon, and then informally re-instructed by the techs, to begin learning the basic functions of the board. Not the dangerous ones. Not the ones that could cause a playback spike or wipe a track. Just the gentle, entry-level toggles—cueing prerecorded takes, marking timestamps, importing source files from the storage vault—and, most useful, categorization and sorting of the dailies after everyone had gone home for the day.
The techs, Marcus and Elena, were delighted. Not because Owen was particularly talented yet, but because he listened, nodded, and didn’t try to show off. In the realm of unpaid interns and musical hangers-on, this was essentially sainthood. And he was a whiz with the computer—had even taught them a few things. After all, he was a lifelong computer geek who was majoring in network engineering at Cal Poly (well ... not this semester thanks to the whole being disowned by his family thing).
“Okay,” Marcus said, instructing his new protégé, “click on Take 7 of the primary group, then arm the preview channel.”
Owen obeyed. Nothing exploded. This was considered success.
The track in question was The Approaching Horizon, one of Matt’s originals—aggressive, sharp, relentlessly syncopated. They’d been working on his lead guitar tracks all week, and had now reached the bridge section, where things had quietly but firmly fallen apart. No one could say what was wrong. Or even if anything was wrong. The rhythm section was tight. The structure made sense. The tones were good. But somehow, it didn’t sound right. It was the musical equivalent of a paragraph that almost works—close enough to feel finished, yet still full of something you can’t name and can’t fix. And they’d been stuck here for three hours now, trying take after take, tweaking this measure here, that measure there, and accomplishing nothing.
Matt stepped into the isolation booth with the gait of a man about to do something he would definitely consider historic. He adjusted his strap, checked his tuning, and nodded toward the window.
“Cue me up,” he said. “Bridge section only. Let’s see if my fuckin’ mojo hits this time.”
“Define ‘mojo,’” Marcus muttered under his breath.
Jake was in another iso room with his Brogan Les Paul knockoff strapped on, cans already in place, mic hot but muted. His job was to support the phrasing on Matt’s bridge—he wasn’t being recorded, just shadowing the rhythm to keep Matt anchored.
In the main room, Nerdly sat at his electric piano, fingers poised but not playing, head slightly tilted like he was preparing to intercept an alien frequency. The electric keys made no external noise; he was there purely to structure the harmonic floor. Like scaffolding, but nerdier.
Coop and Charlie were off to the side, perched on folding stools in front of the big window, doing their version of moral support: saying nothing and not breaking anything. They weren’t needed for this pass. Their rhythm work was already baked into the track—tight, clean, and played with just enough aggression to sound alive without bleeding into desperate. They were only here in case something needed to be changed around—something that generally happened at least once a day, sometimes more.
Everyone wore headphones. Cans. Essential gear for studio play, they delivered the full audio mix without external sound bleed—critical for maintaining sonic isolation during takes. It also meant that if anyone shouted or cursed, they had to lean into a mic for others to hear it. This was both a blessing and a curse, depending on how many takes they were into and how many takes remained.
They cued the bridge section. Again.
And again.
And again.
Every time, the performance was solid. Clean. In time. Harmonically locked. But something wasn’t right. No one said it. They didn’t have to. Everyone could feel it.
It wasn’t bad.
It just wasn’t good.
The room settled into a heavy silence as the last pass played back over their headphones.
“Still not it,” Jake said finally, his voice flat over the intercom.
“Nope,” Matt confirmed from inside the booth.
Nerdly said nothing. He just removed his glasses and began cleaning them with a bright green microfiber cloth he carried in his fanny pack for just that purpose. It was his universal sign for deep and unspeakable dissatisfaction.
“Can’t say what’s wrong with it,” Coop muttered. “But it’s not right.”
No one disagreed. Not even Charlie.
They sat there in collective inertia, one of those rare moments where even the snark ran dry.
Whatever the problem was, it didn’t have a name.
The silence stretched just a few seconds too long.
Then Jake’s voice came in through the cans, calm but with that faint tonal edge that meant he was about to say something unpopular.
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it’s not a single thing that’s wrong.”
Owen looked up from the screen, hands frozen over the keyboard.
Matt blinked behind the glass. “Say again?”
“I’m just saying,” Jake continued, “it might not be the tone. Or the phrasing. Or the harmony voicing. Maybe it’s the whole bridge section. Maybe it’s just ... wrong.”
Matt stared at him, still as a statue. “You’re saying you want to rework it?”
“I’m saying it’s worth considering.”
Matt yanked his headphones tighter, like that would make the answer different. “Are you fuckin’ serious?”
“I’m fuckin’ serious,” Jake said.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Matt said, pacing the tiny isolation booth like a lion whose zookeeper was tardy with the chow. “If we do that, we’re not just talking about a fuckin’ adjustment. We’re talking about starting over on the entire bridge. We have to rework the rhythm structure. Then maybe we can figure out a new chord progression. Then maybe we can come up with something that doesn’t suck ass. And then—guess what—we have to re-record Coop and Charlie’s tracks again, and that’s only after we’ve spent the rest of this fuckin’ day trying to flesh it out in the first place.”
No one interrupted.
Matt spun toward the window, jabbing a finger toward the control room. “Or we can plow through this and be done with the fuckin’ bridge. Get to the solo. Which, in case everyone forgot, is the actual musical centerpiece of this tune—not the fuckin’ bridge.”
He stood there, breathing through his nose, waiting to see if Jake was going to give in to his argument or choose to rework the entire bridge.
This was the line they danced on now, the one that underpinned everything about post-reunion Intemperance. Because as democratic as it all looked—musicians collaborating, ideas flying, jokes traded like poker chips—everyone in the room knew how the hierarchy really worked.
Jake Kingsley alone had the final say.
He listened to everyone. Always had. Encouraged input, collaboration, dissent, even arguments if they helped move the art forward. But when it came to calls like this—real decisions, ones that affected timeline, structure, and ultimately what ended up on the album—there was no vote. No veto. No appeal.
Jake was not just the frontman and one of the songwriters. He was one of the owners of KVA Records. And for any music released under that banner, he was the producer. That meant if he wanted to rework the bridge, the bridge got reworked. If he wanted to scrap the song, the song got scrapped.
He didn’t like using that power. Everyone knew it. He rarely did. But if necessary? He would.
He just didn’t want to make it necessary.
So, before going full-on Joseph Stalin 1937, he did what Jake Kingsley always did—he asked.
“Coop?” Jake’s voice came through the cans, steady and clear. “You’ve been quiet.”
Coop shrugged, leaning back slightly on his stool. “Something’s off, man. You know it. We all do. I don’t know if reworking is the answer, but I don’t think we can polish this bridge into working.”
Jake nodded. “Charlie?”
Charlie uncrossed and re-crossed his legs, adjusting his cans like they were receiving broadcast static. “It’s harmonically fine, rhythmically tight, but emotionally flat. Feels like a placeholder we forgot to replace.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we should try reworking it. Or at least pretend to.”
Jake didn’t argue. He just turned toward Nerdly in the main room.
Nerdly looked up from his electric piano like he’d just been called on in class. “I agree,” he said. “The bridge is structurally sound but lacking in dimensionality. A full rework might be time-consuming, but I suspect it will yield a stronger resolution into the solo.”
Jake nodded once. That made three votes in favor of rework. Four, if you counted his own. One loud vote against, currently pacing in a box with a guitar and a temper.
Then Jake did something unexpected.
He turned toward Owen.
“GM,” he said casually. “What do you think?”
Owen looked up like someone had just addressed the potted plant next to the soundboard.
“Me?” he said, blinking. “You want to know what I think?”
Everything stopped. Even Matt turned around inside the booth.
And for the first time all day, Owen was on record.
Owen swallowed, his eyes flicking between Jake, Nerdly, and the rest of the band.
“I ... I don’t think I can give a legitimate opinion,” he said finally. “I mean, I love music. I’m having the time of my life just sitting here and helping however I can. But honestly? This would be like me asking one of you guys how to reconfigure a load balancer after a frame relay collapse in a routed subnet.”
There was a short silence.
Then Nerdly, without looking up from his piano, said mildly, “You’d need to flush the ARP cache and rebuild the route table with corrected VLAN tagging. Unless it’s a hardware issue, in which case you swap the relay and test continuity on the patch loop.”
Owen blinked. “Uh ... Mr. Nerdly excepted.”
Jake chuckled. “Yeah, the rest of us have no fuckin’ clue what either of you just said.”
Even Marcus and Elena, both working on their master’s degrees in audio engineering, looked blank.
Jake leaned toward the talkback mic, grinning now. “Good answer, GM.”
“It was?”
Jake nodded. “You didn’t grab my fuckin’ dick and start jerking it off. You gave an honest answer. That’s how we like our studio runners to be.”
The room gave a collective snort of amusement.
Even Matt, still pacing in the booth, cracked half a smile.
And just like that, the pressure dialed back by a click.
For now.
Jake tapped the talkback mic again, calm returning to his voice like someone slowly lowering a record needle.
“Well, Matt,” he said, “everyone seems to think a rework is necessary.”
Matt said nothing. He didn’t have to. Everyone in the room already knew he’d heard every single word.
Jake continued. “We know we want to be done with the tracking and overdubs by the Christmas break. TSF rehearsals start in January, and we don’t want this bleeding over. But the deadline doesn’t mean shit if the song isn’t right. Quality over speed. Every time.” He leaned back slightly. “We’re fuckin’ Intemperance. We do it right. Before it hits the fuckin’ airwaves. Before it leaks onto the fuckin’ P2P networks.”
There was a long pause.
Matt stood in the booth, his hands on his hips, head tilted slightly toward the ceiling as if he might find a better argument written in the acoustic foam.
He didn’t.
“I’m not sayin’ I’m wrong,” he said finally. “But I bow to the fuckin’ majority.”
It was the closest thing to surrender they were ever going to get from Matt Tisdale. And it was enough.
No one had to say it—not Charlie, not Coop, not Nerdly, not even Owen. No one had to point out that Jake had already made the decision and simply let everyone else arrive at it.
That was what made Jake a great producer. It was also what made him a great leader. He didn’t drag people. He led them.
And they followed. Sometimes without even realizing they were following.
At 5:18 PM that same day, Jose Ramirez stepped through the front door still wearing his Casa de Oceano Country Club uniform—forest green polo with the embroidered gold logo, khaki cargo pants, work watch, and the faintest trace of turf clippings at the edge of his boots. The cool marine air of evening followed him in, mixing with the scent of chiles and beans simmering in the kitchen.
He closed the door gently, as always. Then locked it, as always. Then exhaled, as he’d started doing every day since beginning the new job two weeks ago.
Carlos and Emilia were at the kitchen table, books spread out in front of them like miniature office workers deep in fourth-grade paperwork. Emilia was muttering her spelling words under her breath. Carlos was solving math problems like they were beneath him—which, to his credit, some of them were.
“Hi, Papa,” said Carlos.
“Hi, Papa,” said Emilia.
“Hola, niños,” he returned.
He set the laptop bag on the counter like it contained a bomb.
Juanita emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, already reading his face.
“It went well?” she asked.
“Nothing broke,” he said, which in the world of groundskeeping meant a successful day.
She nodded once and then kissed him. “Dinner in half an hour.”
“Gracias.”
He turned toward the laptop. The black plastic machine sat on the small side table near the wall outlet, closed and untouched like a government-issued artifact. It was a work-issued device—and strictly off-limits to the children. Jose had made that clear from day one. This was not a toy. It was for his job. And you did not mess with Papa’s work machine unless invited. Which they hadn’t been. Not even once.
He had never actually used the infernal thing at home—hadn’t needed to. But one of the other supervisors had told him it was possible to connect it to the internet through the phone line, if something truly important came up. Jose had managed the physical part easily enough—plugged the cord into the right port, heard the faint click of a connection—but beyond that, he was lost. The computer didn’t seem to know it had been plugged into anything. And neither did he.
He had been told—more than once—that his first paycheck would arrive tomorrow. Friday. The country club paid biweekly, by direct deposit. But several coworkers had assured him that the money would show up Thursday evening—5:00 PM sharp— because Golden 1 Credit Union—where he’d gotten a free account with the job—processed the deposits as soon as west coast business hours closed. Before money was even in their hands. They actually trusted the country club to deposit the money so much that they let their members have access to it before it was even there.
He hadn’t believed it. He still didn’t. Money didn’t just appear early. Banks did not trust people to really put the money in. That was not how the world worked. Not the world as he understood it.
And that’s why the laptop was now open and plugged in. He could get to his Golden One account through it. Only ... he did not have the slightest idea how.
He looked toward the table.
“Carlos,” he said, clearing his throat.
Carlos didn’t look up. “I’m doing homework, Papa.” Homework was sacred in the Ramirez household. Jose and Juanita had vowed long before that their niños would never pick a single head of lettuce, and would never run a weed-eater or a blower until they owned their own homes.
Juanita glanced over. “Leave him alone. He’s on task.”
“I need his help.”
“Then wait thirty minutes.”
“I need it now.”
“Jose—”
“I need it now,” he said, firmly, without raising his voice, but with a tone that everyone—even Juanita—respected and even feared a little. Papa was pulling rank. He did not do it very often, maybe once a year or so, but he was doing it now.
Juanita instantly ceded control of the family to him and immediately moved to fully support him.
“Carlos, help your father,” she barked in her typical ‘you better mind me fast’ mama voice. ”¡Ándale!”
Carlos stood quickly, grabbing his chair for balance like this was a moment of generational gravity. He walked over and sat beside his father, still in his school clothes, still looking mildly stunned.
“Okay, Papa,” Carlos said. “What do you need?”
Jose pointed to the screen. “I want to see my money. They say it should be there.”
Carlos pushed up the sleeves of his shirt like he was about to perform surgery. Jose scooted the chair over to give him room. The laptop screen glowed uncertainly in front of them, still sitting on the desktop like it was waiting to be convinced it had a job to do.
“Okay,” Carlos said, cracking his knuckles. “First we have to tell it that it’s online.”
“It is online,” Jose said. “I plugged in the cord.”
“That’s just electricity for the internet, Papa. You have to connect it.”
Jose nodded like that made any sense at all. It was connected. He could see the cord plugged into the computer on one end and into the phone jack on the other.
Carlos clicked through the control panel and opened the modem settings, navigating with the kind of calm speed that came from having done this exact thing on two school computers and his cousin’s janky desktop in Bakersfield.
He opened the “Dial-Up Networking” menu, scrolled down, and clicked on the default connection.
“You have to tell it which one,” he explained. “Sometimes it thinks it’s supposed to use the wireless card or something fake.”
“There are fake modems?” Jose asked.