<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #14

Tonx sat in the Chicago O’Hare airport, fingers laced behind his head, bobbing slightly to the new trance tunes Cass had fed his comp before he left. He was excited to meet Poulpe in person; they’d collaborated together at least a dozen times and he had a lot of respect for him. The man was sharp and had consistently surprised him with his insights. That he had put his life in Tonx’s hands didn’t ease that weight much, Tonx was pleased to discover. He rolled the feeling around his head, took its measure. The next few weeks were going to be big. Tonx smiled, adjusted his sunglasses, watched the scrollbar roll across the bottom of the lenses’ edge, and waited.

He’d just hit that alpha state of relaxed wakefulness, that edge of sleep, when the call from Pharoe brought him instantly to anxious consciousness. He wasn’t supposed to be getting calls now, here. Something was wrong.

“Hey man, what’s up?” he said in forced amicability.

“Oh, you know” said the cool voice on the other end of the line. “Just wondering when you’re coming, what with your flight being delayed and all that.”

This was bad. Pharoe was paranoid at the best of times; calling to say there was a delay, and on an unencrypted line, meant something had been seriously fucked up.

“As long as the plane’s able to fly I’ll be there, man. I’ll check the schedules and drop you a message” he said.

“No worries, they make them planes tough. I’ll be looking for your message. Adios, bro.”

“Ciao” Tonx said.

He waited a moment, forced himself to take ten full breaths, cleared his head. First order of business was getting a clear comm channel. He hesitated, then dialed in a call to Fede.

His comm bleeped six times before his brother’s sleepy voice fell onto the line. “Hello?” said Fede, “Tonx?”

“You betcha, bro” said Tonx. “Listen, I need you wakey-wakey ASAP, ok? I just realized I missed an important email but I can’t get to it from here. Think you can access it for me?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Fede. “You’re calling me, aren’t you? What’s the problem with your connection?”

Tonx cursed his brother’s lack of guile, massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger.

“Oh, you know me!” he laughed. “I think I hozored my mail client. It’s a message from Aunt Penny. Think you can help me out, Fede?”

There was silence on the line for a minute.

“Aunt Penny?” Fede asked.

Tonx pursed his lips, waited, hoped.

“Okay, Tonx. No problem. Ah, do you want me to fix your email client while I’m at it?”

Tonx smiled, closed his eyes. “Yeah, man, that’d be a huge fucking help. You think you can figure a way to get a good connection to me here? I’m at an airport and they don’t let you initiate any outbounds except for web traffic.”

“No problem” said Fede, his voice warming, the purr of a challenge in his words. “Sit tight. How recently did Aunt Penny message you do you think?”

“Real recently. I’d guess it’s the only message I’d have gotten to that account in the last hour or so.”

“Okay” said Fede, and hung up.

Tonx sat back, put his hands behind his head, and practiced breathing. Aunt Penny was a codeword they’d used when they were kids, a character from a Penny Arcade game mod they’d both liked. The mod had included some porn skins, and Aunt Penny was the code word they’d used in front of their mother to refer to anything in the game involving downloading or running the mods. It was ancient history, but Fede had remembered and caught on. The boy had promise, Tonx thought. Thank god.

Twenty minutes later Tonx’s comm bleeped and he watched a web address scroll by. It was an Angelfire site, a free hosting provider that paid for itself through copious pop-up ads and flashing banners branded across whatever content you put up. The sites they hosted were about as temporary as anything you’d find on the Net, havens for porn and warez. Angelfire admins constantly worked through the content deleting sites that violated their terms of service, frequently enough that most folks ignored stuff hosted there entirely as it was likely gone by the time you’d found the URL. But it was a perfect place to host something like this.

Tonx clicked the link and watched a page expand. The colors were a little washed because his glasses were so lightweight, but it was clear enough for him to see the mauve background and tope ad text flashing across the top of the page. The design screamed amateur and violated every decent web page design rule out there, but before Tonx could read more an alert box appeared asking if he wanted to accept a security certificate from an unknown source. Tonx checked the cert and smiled at its owner, one Mrs. Gabriel Penny. He clicked ok and watched his browser initiate a secure handshake, encrypting the connection. The box disappeared and the page resolved itself. Tonx laughed; the page had two text boxes, one for him to type in and the other for text to appear in, and the boxes were flanked by pixilated topless women gyrating clumsily. It was ancient game art from the mod they’d played — Mrs. Penny at her finest. It also violated Anglefire’s terms of service and guaranteed a half-life of about an hour for the page. The whole setup was primitive, but it fit the bill for what Tonx needed, and Fede had put it together fast. Words appeared in the top text box:

<?> Sorry to force text, but the airport only allows secure web sessions. Still had to proxy it through a bank transaction traffic rebounder to get an acceptable route. It’s crackable, but they’ll need a big data set to do it. I’m limiting us to 11,000 bytes.”

Tonx watched as the tiny counter at the bottom of the page iterated to 41, stopped as Fede stopped typing.

<X> Excellent. You get the mail?

<?> Yeah, only one account had a single email arrive in the last hour. Who setup your security? Your cluster’s tighter than a pre-teen Moslem.

<X> Who said I didn’t?

<?> I did, you aren’t that good. Here’s the mail, from “Pharoe Munch.”

The text Fede pasted in appeared in blue, indicated it was copied from another source. Tonx chewed his lip briefly, put his hands in his armpits.

<?> I don’t get all that, but it doesn’t sound good. And is this shit babelfished? It reads like it’s converted from something other than English.

<X> Yeah, its spanglish and street slang from down south. I need you to find Cass and get her to contact a guy named Cessus. That’s who setup my box’s security, he’s fucking badass security guy. Watch him — he’s crazy.

<?> Okay, what do I tell him?

<X> Looks like the Boers got Poulpe locked up tight in some backwater in Florida. Pharoe’s boys got a way to jack him, but we need to make sure no data leaks back to his sponsors. The GPS coordinates are in his email.

Tonx thought for a moment, added:

<X> Tell Cessus our man worked for the mouse. He’ll go for it. He hates the megacorps big fierce.

<?> ??

<X> How long does this channel stay open for?

<?> I’d give it another half hour.

<X> Can you relay a command line through this? I need to do some biz. We need a way out of here, assuming we turn up with a live person instead of a corpse.

<?> No prob. Call me if you run out of word count and I’ll rerun this site somewhere else. Be quick, though — not too many folks transmit that much traffic to their bank, so the Airport will start looking soon.

<X> Thanks

The text box cleared and the login for Tonx’s account scrolled past. A family of four, both parents wearing matching Coca-Cola corp suits, strolled by carrying an assortment of luggage. Their two boys towed behind in kids’ versions of the outfits, the swirling coke label animated and swirling on their backs, laughing and poking at each other with tiny pistols. Tonx started typing.

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