Tunnel Rat

Chapter 255: Frank goes on Vacation

The elevator picked up speed, and Milo grabbed a handhold with his tail to steady himself. The acceleration was followed by a period of slowing, and then a light above the door indicated they had reached their destination. The elevator doors opened, and three Roomba left to scout and report. Milo was laying flat on the car's roof, fearing the possibility of armed opponents pointing guns at him when they caught someone using their secret elevator. While his brave scouts explored, he decided to head to the roof using the ladder.

At the top of the ladder was a small access hatch to the outside that negated the need to open the large doors. There was a crank to operate the gears and move the small collapsium panel that served as a door. According to his watch, it was night, and there was less chance of being seen when he opened the door. While the Habitat never totally slept, activity was far less during the night cycle, and most of the technicians didn't live in the Habitat, making the chance of encountering a repair crew very small. He crawled out of the hatch and saw that he was completely unseen between two air ducts. He recognized where he was. A small building had been placed in such a way that it annoyed the hell out of him when placing his new solar panels. He could find no use for it, and it was locked tight. He skulked around the dark area by the helipad and moved between the solar panels to the building, happily noting that the panels blocked any view of the elevator opening.

Satisfied that he was safe to take the elevator to the roof if needed, he retraced his path, climbing back down to the top of the elevator and exiting it normally. His scouts reported much dust and no people. He wandered through the empty office space, seeing nothing of interest. It looked exactly like all the other admin offices that took up space in different sections on various floors. The Habitat builders had envisioned a small city with manufacturing, parks, and a population of happy inhabitants, all run by a city government spread out over the Habitat. But, like many other things that hadn't happened.

Corporations bid on the contracts to run each section, then sold off parts of those contracts to an ever-changing group of low-bidding sub-contractors who did some work, then left. No one was working to bring about the original vision of the Habitats. Milo knew his efforts were, at best, only maintaining a minimum operating level in his section. More now that he had Victor's money to spend, but that wouldn't last forever. For years, nothing like this had bothered him. Now that he knew more of the people living in the Habitat, the things they endured couldn't be ignored. It would never be a village working together the way Limburger Hollow operated. Still, there were things he could do. One example would be the power available to him if he could fix the problems with the fusion reactor that powered Downtown. Finding a way to utilize it and not let anyone know would be the problem.

Leaving Max and his two scouts to guard the elevator, it was easy to get home in a few minutes. The inside of the tank seemed small now. It had been his home for almost two decades, but he wanted to upgrade his systems and spread out. The command tower in the engineering section of Downtown would be ideal. It had ten times more space, it was near where he needed to work with Rusty, and the only thing it lacked was a processed food dispenser. He would have to skip food cubes and live on the tasty frozen meals he'd found. Getting all his cobbled-together computers and systems down to the tower would be many trips. Would it be better to buy and install new computers in the tower? Wait...

He almost beat his head against the wall for being so stupid. Downtown was a quantum fortress! More computing resources than a thousand Milo's could ever use. The real question was if Rusty minded and sharing. And was he was opening himself up to problems by putting his systems on one of the quantum cores. Of course, Rusty had already been in his systems; did it matter?

"Rusty, are you listening?"

[Yes, I'm here! I'm trying not to bug you, but you're doing such interesting stuff! Max is showing me some short, low-quality videos of your travels. And I found your anime collection! This stuff is awesome. Can you get me more? Is there more?]

Milo only had a few of his favorite titles stored in his system out of the hundreds of thousands of anime shows available. "There is a lot more. I'll have to download some to my system. It will be slow transferring them down by the relay system."

[Why use the relay? You activated the data net links. Why not just use that? If you download the anime files to anywhere in the Habitat, I can grab them from there. Easy-Peasy. Please, please, please?]

"Wait! You have data net access to the Habitat? Have you always had that?"

[No, not until just now. I saw you activated it for just the VIP area. Good thinking! There might be automated systems that try to access the data net. Especially the sneak VIP security system. It still doesn't like me. It's coded not to talk to me. Can you fix that? It's rude. Once I knew the link from the security center to the Habitat was working, I had some of the Roomba help me set up the linkage I needed. Right now, only I can access the Habitat directly, but if you want, I can put links into the tower in engineering and to the monitor room where we play chess. Once that is done and you return here, you can download all the anime to one of my cores. There is SO MUCH unused space!]

Milo had to ask the question but feared the answer, "Rusty? Can you access the Data Net yourself to download the anime?"

[...i could...]

"But you aren't allowed?"

[Jeremy said that would be bad. BAD. VERY VERY BAD!]

[And if you want to know how bad (I did), it would be 'They will find you and erase you' bad.]

[Jeremy said that I have big feet and would leave big tracks if I used the data net and to never go on the internet. He mentioned torches and pitchforks, which is very confusing. Please explain sometime about torches and pitchforks.]

[I can't access the data net. But I need anime. Please? I will owe you favors. BIG FAVORS!]

[And we are friends. Friends share anime.]

Milo had to concede the logic of the last point. Yumi had shared with him, and so had all of his friends, introducing him to lots of fun shows. Now, he needed to help his new friend, Rusty. "Jeremy was correct. There are human-made programs that search the data net and internet for signs of new A.I. And, there is one A.I. that is left that might have to report you to the humans. It's tricky; they put a lot of rules in his kernel. We'll talk about him later. For now, how about this? I'll set up a program to find anime and download it to you but in return..."

[Yes. Thank you!]

"You didn't hear your part of the deal yet."

[Don't care. I'll do it.]

"Ok, here's what you have to do: You let me use part of a core for my own systems and storage. You promise not to run through my systems, my stored data, or my email. And when I introduce you to Mama, you listen to her when she explains why you must hear both sides of a deal before accepting it. Agreed?"

[I already agreed. I agree again. Mama must be very wise, like Jeremy.]

"That's a good way to think about it."

Milo spent the next six hours working with Rusty to transfer all his stored data, programs, and hacking systems to the currently powered core. Along with that was a steady stream of anime. He used the Claw Master account to buy what wasn't public domain, had it sent to the Claw Master offices first, and then routed to him in the Habitat. He had a lot.

Sydney entered Steven's office and sat down, looking tired and confused. "We need to talk. There's a problem with Milo."

Steven put down the report he'd been looking at, complaints by corporations about ACME gaining a monopoly on the sausage market, of all things. It was hard to take something like that seriously. "What's up with Milo?"

"He has an anime addiction. A bad one. It's worse than his cheese addiction in the game. He's ordering thousands of hours of anime and having them delivered here so I can transfer them to his storage in the Habitat. It's a constant stream and more than a human could watch in a lifetime. I've already paid bills for over sixty-seven thousand dollars in anime, and that's with the hefty 67% discount I negotiated with a distributor."

Steven relaxed. There were so many other things that Milo could have done that would have worried him. If the boy was going to fill his waking hours watching One Piece or Dragonball, those were hours he wouldn't warp financial markets and hack into databases. "I think you underestimate how his brain works. Wally is sure he can run several thought processes simultaneously, like a computer. Maybe he has six screens running simultaneously? I wouldn't worry about it too much."

She had to admit, the thought of Milo not causing problems for her had its appeal. "You aren't worried about how much money he is spending?"

Chuckling, Steven transferred a file to her. "We sold the first sets of gloves for a million dollars each, and all we did was put a gold embossed Claw Master logo on them and call them 'Premier Collectibles.' We sold 637 sets. Some of those went to research scientists at Rhebus, leading to a five billion dollar contract. They've already notified us about how the technology combined with their cloning techniques can potentially help millions of people. Milo gets a percentage of all profits from that business. I'm not worried about him spending money on anime."

Sydney looked at the numbers. "Oh! You know what, I'm not worried either, now that I think about it. And it answers my other question at the same time."

"Which is?"

"Well, he was very polite about asking and knew how much work it would be. He asked if he could send me something to make up for it, so I said to send me some interesting coffee to try. But later, I felt guilty about it. Not now. I'll get back to work and work overtime to find all the titles he wants and then enjoy whatever blend he sends me."

Steven nodded. "A healthy outlook."

Milo had never known there were so many kinds of coffee! It was really hard to decide what to send Sydney. Some coffee was grown in the mountains, and some in swamps or greenhouses. And he'd never heard of feeding coffee to elephants and pulling the beans out of their poop! But the reviews said it was the best, only five hundred dollars a pound. Coffee confused Milo the more he learned about it. While looking, he heated some of the flash-frozen tacos and enchiladas he had ordered from Frank. Frank had done a great job doing all the work and checking on the delivery. He'd even emailed Milo personally through Claw Master, ensuring the order was correct. That gave Milo an idea.

Frank was currently on vacation and asleep, but his phone had a few numbers set up to follow him anywhere and alert him at any time of the night. One of those numbers was ringing now. His heart sank when he saw it was from the customer in Philadelphia. Something had gone wrong. Something always went wrong.

"Hi, this is Frank. Whatever the problem is, I can take care of it."

"Thanks, Frank, it's a big problem, and I'm really confused by it."

Sighing, Frank prepared to cut his vacation short and offer a refund. "Well, hit me with it, and I'll make things right."

"Great! I need coffee for a friend. She drinks a lot and has been a big help. Can you get me 500 lbs. of coffee? Different coffees. Whatever is really good. Let me know how much it is for the bill, and I'll send the money by courier. Then send it to Sidney at Claw Master headquarters."

Frank was furiously writing things down, even though his phone recorded the call.

"You know, make it a thousand pounds. She drinks a lot of coffee. Thanks, Frank."

Frank's wife would find him the next day, asleep in a chair in front of his laptop, three empty cups of coffee on the table near him, and a smile on his face.