Chapter 5

Five days later, not a week and I was released. Blake was there to pick me up and take me back to my place. While enroute he handed me a bill. My stay inside had come to thirteen and a half grand and for my weapons and armor another sixty-seven hundred and change. He showed minus five grand on account and four grand for the 'outing' which meant I still owed him over eleven thousand nuyen.

"What you got was not junk, just like what I am getting will not be junk. You can work that off or we can take it out in trade which ever you want. I'm not billing you, I'm just letting you know how much has been spent on the things that you wanted. Any questions?"

"No. The job the other night wasn't bad. In fact it was kind of fun in a scary sort of way. I wouldn't mind going on a few more but can we do both. Take some of this out in trade and let me repay some of it? I'll need the scratch to hold up my part of the bargain. I can do some of the jobs for the necessary money to buy the parts I'll need for your new board and the rest you keep to pay off these expenses. It will also allow me to get some things that I need for some other work that I'm doing. Deal?" I asked.

"Deal," he said.

For the next three days I worked on both his new rigger interface and a new program that I wanted. I called it a 'Snail'. I was going to use a Smart Frame to send the 'snail' into the Togiwara mainframe. By moving so slow I thought it was possible the Ice would overlook it. They would get used to seeing it there and ignore it or that was the plan. A Decker or anyone else who was not supposed to be there would be moving as rapidly as they could to get in and out without tripping any alarms. The 'snail' would be doing just the opposite and hopefully would be overlooked or ignored. If this worked then I was just starting my campaign against both Nogumi and Togiwara.

I had been working with the Smart Frame for some time. Now with the nuyen from Blake and the prospect of more to come I could afford the necessary parts to make up a couple more and to make them with even more features to help. Larger memories, better programs for both offense and defense as well as more complex instructions. A Smart Frame can be given a job to do and left to do it. You don't need to be there to oversee it all the time. I could set it to its task and leave for a week and come back and read the info that it has gathered. With an automatic feature to shunt all information gathered to an offline storage unit even if it got caught I could read the data that it had gathered up to that point and not suffer any of the damage myself. The only problem is that a Smart Frame is dumb. You give it a list of instructions and it will carry them out to the letter and in the order they are given. If something happens so it can't carry out a certain order it will spend the rest of the time it's there trying to carry out that order instead of skipping to the next order. That's why you need to triple check any instructions to make sure you haven't gotten the instructions out of order.

I installed the data chip into the Smart Frame and sent it on its way. If this worked like I had programmed it to do it would work like a worm slowly burrowing deeper and deeper into the files and systems that I wanted. It would leave little messages at different places along the way. Little messages that would some day shout at Togiwara and Nogumi both.

I had only been back in the workshop for an hour when the telecom sounded and it was Blake. When I answered he asked me to come over to his place. He told me to bring both my best deck and gear for a run. He also said to be prepared to spend some time away from home but wouldn't say why just that it was important and that I shouldn't waste time.

"How am I supposed to get there in a hurry?" I asked. "You live in Renton and my place is in the University District. This time of day the traffic will be terrible. My car is a little electric runabout, remember? I'll get there when I can."

I hung up and started to gather my gear. Not knowing what type of problem he might have me working on I dug out another chip holder and loaded it with several special programs. Some that were a little out of the ordinary. I also disconnected and loaded up the Smart Frame again not knowing how long I would be gone. I then climbed into the leather harness for my weapons and after making sure they were loaded placed the weapons into the holsters. Putting on my jacket and slinging my deck case over my back I was ready. Grabbing up my bag I left the flat and walked down the stairs and over to the secured parking lot. I pay a fee each month for parking and the security that goes with it. My little car isn't much but it is the only wheels I have and I did NOT want to depend on the bus to get around.

Less than an hour after he had called I was crawling out of my car in front of a real fancy place. When I knocked on Blake's door he answered with the chain on. Removing it he opened the door wide and motioned me inside. He then checked the hallway to make sure there was no one following me. His place was a lot nicer than mine. It was more like my Aunt's place. He had both paintings and decorations on the walls. The only things decorating my walls were the cracks. As a student I was more interested in function. I needed a place to flop and a place for my workshop. Later I could look into a nice place with decorations and so on. His floors were carpeted and the furnishings were very nice. In the background there was some soft music playing. Not loud enough to interrupt but loud enough that you knew it was there.