AWACS - An American With A Chinese System
Copyright© 2025 by PT Brainum
Chapter 21
I woke to sunshine, and a brilliant view of the ocean, beach, and incredible rocks. I also was starving. There had been mention of a breakfast buffet, so I headed down to find it.
It was big, it was long, and there was a line, but it didn’t take long. Afterwards I wandered the casino floor checking out who would gamble on a Sunday morning. The answer was: mostly old people.
I headed back to the room and got bundled up for the sunshine. Another pass thru the gift shop got me a jacket and hat to go with my sweatshirt, and I braced the wind.
It was gorgeous, beautiful, and amazing. After wandering the beach for an hour, I headed to the gift shops that surrounded the area. Nothing lit up in my sight showing that it was undervalued. Not surprising, considering that good deals tend to happen away from the tourists.
I did find a pawn shop, where I bought a couple phones, a Pixel 2 and a Pixel 3 XL. They also had prepay sim cards for sale, so I got three of those. Then I noticed they had an old Nexus 7, the second version which I’d had at one point in life, it looked like it was in really great condition, and was only 50 bucks. So I got it too.
Back at my room, I spent the points to upgrade the phones to Pixel 7’s, the XL became a very nice pixel 7 pro, which gave me hope for my plan. I also upgraded the phone I had been using to a pixel 7, now that I had plenty of points.
Taking the Nexus 7 I attempted to perform the upgrade on it. It failed at first try, but then I explained to the skill, or perhaps the system, that a new tablet had been announced by Google, called the Pixel Tablet, and it was the successor to the Nexus series of tablets, it had just been a long time since they had made an Android tablet.
I tried the skill again and it still didn’t upgrade, oh well. I updated one of the new phones, the 7 Pro, so that it had all my information from my old phone, then put them into one of my chests for storage, after fully charging them.
After lunch, I called a local car rental place, and they came and picked me up. I got a nice little blue one this time. On the way back I stopped at a little gift shop that sold things made of wood. They had a great collection of wooden boxes with beautiful wood inlays. I picked the largest they had, and had them send it express to Pete in San Diego.
I had included a big note on the top of the box, ‘this is mine, you’re just holding it for me’ the shop attendant gave me a look, and I just shrugged, “Pete gets a little possessive of stuff.”
I hoped to use it for summoning, but was worried if Pete decided it was a gift, that I would lose my ability to summon it, because it would be his instead of mine.
Headed back to the hotel, I enjoyed the bright sun, as the day almost warmed. The breeze was brisk, the air invigorating. I decided to detour and headed back to the beach. I was surprised to find somebody out there on a kite board, much like I’d seen recently at the boat show. The surf was mild, but the jumps the rider was getting were impressive, using the wind and the parachute shaped kite to pull higher into the air.
I wasn’t the only one entertained by the performance, as most everybody on the beach seemed to be watching. The chill finally penetrated my desire to enjoy the beach in person, and I headed back to the hotel room.
The beach was just as nice from inside the hotel room, looking thru the window, fireplace going, and hot chocolate in hand. I was trying to figure out what to do next when I got an email from my lawyer asking me to call.
“Hi Koby,” she answered.
“How do you know it’s me?” I asked.
“I give a different phone number to each client.”
“Ok, that makes total sense.”
“Pete said you were quick, most people don’t bother to ask, and just assume they are my only client.”
“It just threw me off when it happened last time.”
“I noticed, thanks for calling, I wanted to let you know that Red Morro is in custody, FBI figured out what flight he was on, walked onto the plane after it landed, and took him away.”
“That’s great, what do I need to do?”
“The FBI would like to do an interview.”
“I’m not doing it in person.”
“They understand your medical situation, so I’d like to arrange that I go on your behalf, and have you available by speaker phone.”
“That sounds fine, what day?”
“They want to do it immediately, but I put them off till tomorrow afternoon. We will need to talk beforehand on how to answer, and how to wait for my guidance before answering.”
“I can be available tomorrow.”
“Good, the FBI searched your room at Spirit Casino, but the Casino didn’t refund what you prepaid for the room. They did wave the cleaning fee after the FBI got thru with it.”
“Seriously, how is it that they search my room? I’m not the criminal here, I’m the victim!”
“You’re not playing by their rules, so they get to be pissy. Don’t worry, once you are interviewed, things should calm down. If you had been charged for the casino putting the room back together, we would have billed them for it.”
“I get it, do they have the info on my Spirit Card with my winnings?”
“It didn’t come up while they were there. The casino mentioned that they weren’t happy, but that was with the FBI, not you. They were hopeful you’ll come back again soon.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was waiting for them when they got to the Casino.”
“That’s, well, I don’t know what that is,” I replied, “But thank you.”
“All part of the service, and don’t worry my fee will be well paid for when TransNat settles your personal injury suit.”
“Is that what attempted murder is called?”
“It’s not as easy as winning a wrongful death suit, so I expect to earn my 30%.”
“Touché.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.