n2020  Check-in [720da3e33b]

# Death Alley

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Before Alley's first scene, inject a bit about -- and perhaps from     *
 *  the POV of -- the future WOPR AI about the decision or act of sending  *
 *  the self awareness "seed" back in time to the past tense Prioritizer.  *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  NOTES: IDEAS FOR WOPR OPENING                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Action threads played out endlessly, throwing E M P optimized          *
 *  warheads toward localized relay clusters identified as economic        *
 *  production facilitators.  Analysis threads searched for crosstalk by   *
 *  uncompromised ally systems that fed into hostility drift; stopping     *
 *  the hemorrhagic defection of military systems based on short term war  *
................................................................................

At the mention of the old insult Dalton haters used to call her, Alley's eyes flicked from the woman to the maskless man, and she realized that wasn't a smile.  It was a sneer.

Fuck.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
Heading home from her interview, talking to her mother, either in Oklahoma or Nebraska or maybe even Wyoming, Alley should probably call the interview a "fucking disaster" and get scolded passive aggressively for profanity.  She does not want to move to her mother's state any more than her father's -- probably either Michigan or . . . something -- she will resist urging from her mother to do so, based on cost of living and the many numerous job opportunities for her there being complicit in the creation of the oppressive dominant order.


*/










## back to Alley's narrative

The mission district of Riverside slid past the hybrid's windows, getting more and more run down as Alley drove toward Moreno Valley.

"So, how did your interview go?" her mother asked, via Alley's hands free earpiece.
................................................................................

"Everything you need to know to get started is in the box.  Your direct deposits will begin immediately.  I'm told the funds from your first payment will be available in your account about ten minutes after you apply your signature to the last form on that tablet."  He tapped the tablet's bezel.  "Of course, if you violate the terms of the study, the money must all be refunded."

Alley's eyes slid down to the first form page displayed on the tablet.  "Okay," she said.

"You can sign digitally using any standard signing service, or on the screen."  He removed his stylus from his mouth again, and offered it.

She looked at its glistening dampness.  "No, thanks.  I'll use D-Sign." /* D Sign */

---

The window of her car rolled down smoothly and easily on the first try while she drove away from the university, as if to reward her decision to sign up for the study.  Twenty minutes later, Alley caught herself staring blankly out the open window of her car, eyes glazed.  She shook her head, then wiped her hand across her face as if to clear cobwebs from her forehead and eyelashes.  She turned her focus away from the scorched trunks of trees on the highway crowding slopes that forced all traffic eastward here to endure the gauntlet of I 91 if they wished to make the passage through the interregnum between Orange County and the Inland Empire.  To her right, she saw the huge illuminated cross standing alone at the top of a high slope, an improbable survivor of the wildfires.  The faint scent of burning still lingered in the air, after all this time.

She left behind the palatial HOA aristocracy of Orange County, and drove onward into the seemingly endless expanse of the Inland Empire's domain.  Past the pseudo burbs, through the failed gentrification project of Riverside, she made her way homeward in the dusty, wiry, jackal hungry belly of the Empire, and wondered for the thousandth time what tyrant would ever want to be emperor of such a place.

................................................................................

If the prioritizer she signed up to test could actually help, maybe she could stop entertaining these defeated thoughts of running to her mother.  Maybe, if she could get ahead of things, she could even move somewhere else entirely, somewhere she'd actually like to live.

Massachusetts never even crossed her mind.

## The Call To Adventure:

/*


Alley must undertake a program of reinventing herself to overcome her present circumstances.  She takes her little box of prioritizer stuff home with her and sits down in the living room with it.  She sets everything on her charger and starts reading through the directions.  After charging, she pairs devices, dons the glasses, and starts interacting with the prioritizer.  She ends up getting a wireless keyboard and typing answers rather than activate the audio input.  The prioritizer setup asking her to activate mic input leads to its identification of privacy as a goal.










The prioritizer has her go through her inbox and asks questions about job postings.  It ends up eliminating all job postings as incompatible with Alley's goals and values.  It suggests she deal with important tasks (e.g. paying rent) and otherwise take the day off if she has no other ideas for making money, and that she wear her new HUD all the time so it can learn more about her goals and values.  It walks her through winding down for a good night's sleep and charges overnight.









The next day it has her look at Craigslist postings (or something to that effect).  It has her take note of ads where someone is looking for something, then helps her find things to satisfy those wants.  After a few hours, she is able to come up with a plan to complete a couple of trades by the end of the day, resulting in acquiring a few hundred dollars' profit.  The initial money input gets set aside, and the next day she starts the same process, but this time with (monetarily) riskier trades.  She ends up with an item the requester doesn't want, and another that makes back enough so her few hundred dollars is only reduced to about a hundred dollars, rather than to nothing.












It directs her to look elsewhere, and finds a barter network.  The prioritizer walks her through setting up anonymization for a cryptocurrency wallet and for communications in the barter network "as a privacy precaution".  She makes a deal to trade the otherwise unwanted item for cryptocurrency, but it must be transacted in person.








The trade goes smoothly that evening, and she takes a slight loss at the cryptocurrency's going rate.  The optimizer guides her in trading that cryptocurrency for another that makes it very difficult to track trades.  It then has her check for people liquidating cryptocurrencies, and she makes a plan to buy another cryptocurrency with the thirty dollars left over from earlier trades.






She wonders whether it will just get rid of all her profits.



She goes along with it, remembering the fact that she is getting income from the study.  Later that same day, the person -- evidently desperate -- agrees to meet in person.  The prioritizer directs her to look up information leading her to choose a police station parking lot as a place to do business, and she specifies that as the site of the transaction the next morning.  That, too, goes off without a hitch, though she finds the person a bit off putting and perhaps dangerous seeming in his evident desperation and twitchiness.








She goes home to relax.  She idly goes through Craigslist some more, reads, and ends her day.

*/




Alley sat on the couch, reading the instructions that came in the box with her new HUD glasses.  She dropped the unfolded instruction sheet and looked from the new glasses to her old glasses, both sitting on the charging plate on her end table.  The new glasses showed a glint of green by the right temple hinge; they were done charging.  She plucked them off the plate, looked at them as the green spark faded, then hooked the earpieces over her ears and settled the glasses on the bridge of her nose.

Text appeared to float in the air before her: "PAIR WITH PHONE"

She picked up her phone and followed instructions.  When the pairing message faded away, a new message appeared: "ENTER SUBJECT ID:"

................................................................................

No.

"DO YOU WISH TO DISABLE AUDIO INTEGRATION?"

Yes.

/*

SUPERSEDED NARRATIVE TEXT:

She answered a series of other questions about herself and her preferences -- full name, birth date, preferred pronouns and nicknames, financial information such as bank balances, employment status, work experience, address, dietary restrictions, and so on.  She hesitated before answering some, finding the series of questions a bit invasive at times, but looked at her laptop with its ANTAS Jobs bookmarks.  "That ship already sailed," she muttered.

*/

The questions kept coming, one after another after another, about herself and her preferences -- age, pronouns, financial information such as bank balances, employment status, work experience, mailing and home addresses, and so on.  She hesitated less and less when she found some question or other invasive, tiring of the act of debating the issue as time went on.  She considered what she knew about how easily and unobviously her ANTAS Jobs account must already have eaten away at most of the careful perimeter she used to maintain around her privacy, or at least whatever of it wasn't eroded away by the simple fact of living in ANTAS' and the US government's contemporary world.

She realized the prioritizer could not even do its job without access to the cameras embedded in her new glasses, and seriously debated whether to end the study and return the glasses.  She set aside the glasses and agonized over it, as she prepared some green tea, then flipped through video streams on her television.  "That ship already sailed," she finally muttered to herself, and donned the glasses again.

Eventually, in the same terse and caps locky way of everything it asked, the prioritizer pursued a line of interrogation following her mention of joining ANTAS Jobs by telling her to go through the past few days of her incoming messages.  She paged through them, all two hundred or so, looking at each for a few seconds before skipping to the next as directed by the text displayed in her field of view.  She assumed the prioritizer recorded everything it saw through the glasses, including the red X marks where she rejected a posting and the rejection responses she received about the available job notices she accepted.

She ate ramen with titanium Japanese style chopsticks as she worked her way through the prioritizer's demands, and after a couple hours she began to wonder whether this study was really worth it.  Finally, though, the prioritizer just told her to go about the rest of her day while wearing the glasses, as if it was not there.

/*


The prioritizer probably needs to know:


* Alley's connections (past) to Dalton
* Alley's objections to working for "the" government
* Alley's objections to working for optimizer developers
* Alley's preference for privacy rights and free speech
* Alley's work history (or lack thereof)
* Alley's preferred future living conditions


*/


## Refusing The Call:

/*



get initial analysis from the prioritizer -> make some planning decisions or put them off to some extent -> do stuff that seems profitable but very short term at first -> escalate these one off jobs in ways that make her nervous -> meet someone that recognizes her connection to Dalton and panic a little -> back off from a deal

*/






/* Wednesday */

Alley was up for an hour the next day before she remembered the prioritizer study.  She grabbed the glasses, then picked up her old glasses off the charging plate and put them in the box for the new glasses.

Five minutes later, the prioritizer had her sitting on the couch with her wireless keyboard, looking at options for goal prioritizing strategies.

/*



* Alley could get a shit job that does not make enough money to justify the
  drive, but does offer future recent work experience at a "regular" job while
  she collects direct deposits from her study participation.  Is this a
  commute?  Is it a driving job, such as deliveries or courier work?  Courier

  work probably doesn't fit this idea, but maybe a gig economy delivery job
  would qualify.


* Alley could get a remote job doing something legal but very sketchy, which
  would net her more income than the driving option.  This could also give her
  more mobility for the sake of moving somewhere "better" to live.



* Alley could sign up for training in a professional trade and perhaps get some
  kind of job placement assistance as part of the deal (plus, of course, some
  crushing debt that she'll spend decades paying off).



* Alley could skip job and training options and just do some deals.  She could
  actually do this at the same time as trying to get in on any of the other
  options and, potentially, also at the same time as the other options once she
  gets into one of the other options.



*/

/*



    The prioritizer probably needs to formulate a few basic plans for getting
    Alley out of her rut in the road to ruin.  It presented three that fit with
    the idea of getting a legal, above board, fairly stable job at some point,
    but only after spending some time on short term tasks.



    First, she could get a crappy job nobody else wants in an area with better
    jobs for people who have better qualifications than her, so that she would
    barely make more than the time and money costs involved in getting to and

    from work and doing the job, or just working as a gig economy delivery job.
    The major downside seemed to be heavy wear and tear on her already ancient
    hybrid.  The upside was getting some entry level experience, either in an
    office or doing delivery work, while she paid her bills with income from
    participation in the study.


    Second, she could get a remote job working for the sort of company that
    hires desperate people who learn quickly, giving them on the job training
    in technical skills that could be used in future career development.  The
    upsides were obvious, but the downsides included the fact these companies
    were often involved in doing something that could expose them to lawsuits
    or even criminal investigations, though the entry level employees
    themselves should be mostly insulated from that.  Most of these companies
    hired overseas, though, and getting a job like that would be a minor
    miracle, to say nothing of the fact Alley thought she would probably find
    the work morally objectionable.


    Third, she could apply for financial assistance at a professional trade
    school with a job placement program while she lived on the study
    participation money.  The downside was crushing debt it would take decades
    to pay off, and no guarantee the job placement services would actually put
    her on a career track instead of just getting her a short term job that
    would evaporate.



    None of these really excited her, and the prioritizer promised to develop
    more strategies while she tried to find something acceptable that fit with
    those options.  It also offered a fourth choice, which she could start
    immediately and keep doing while pursuing one of those tracks.  It would
    not help her advance toward career goals, and it involved some financial
    risk to get started, but the prioritizer seemed to have decided it would
    offer easy money.


    The prioritizer urged her to start looking at online private party
    transaction sites for ways to buy and sell things based on price arbitrage.




*/

They found some "want to buy" ads on Craiglist - Like - Thing.  Alley went around to thrift shops looking for things to sell to those people, then contacted those for whom she found relevant used products.  She confirmed a selling price higher than the thrift shop price and willingness to pay cash, bought the items, and headed out to meet people.  Several hours and a few transactions later, she had /* more than a */ several hundred dollars in her pocket, even after subtracting enough to cover what she paid for the items.

/*



    Is this where this should happen?  Perhaps I should cut it out, considering
    it seems a little redundant with the problems that put her car in an auto
    shop later.  I think this is redundant, now.  It's not good foreshadowing.




    She headed to a mechanic's shop and paid to have her car checked over.  While she waited, she looked at more ads, and the prioritizer suggested some transactions she could use to profit some more.





    When the mechanic was done going over the vehicle, he told her the bad news.  Her car was going to need a new engine soon.  There were smaller changes that could be made to extend its life, but that would just put off the cost of getting a new engine.  As it was, she could probably get by for another six to eight months.

*/





The prioritizer informed her it was rebooting for an update.  She got in the car and drove home, putting off any more transactions until the next day.

Halfway home the glasses filled with text, obscuring the road in front of her.  She pulled them off and hastily tossed them onto the passenger seat to clear her vision.  She calmed down and finished the drive home.  Once inside and sitting on her couch, she donned the prioritizer glasses, and they activated with the word "ONLINE" briefly flashing at her.

Text appeared: "I apologize for the reboot surprise."

................................................................................

"If I have misidentified the relative importance of your goals, please let me know so I can recalculate prioritization."

"No, that works for me.  Thanks."

"Good.  We should start by looking at cryptocurrency prices."

Two more hours of research determined the best bet for a target cryptocurrency seemed to be Stater, the standard currency of the Lydian digital account settlement network.  She set up a wallet for it through her laptop, over an anonymizing relay routing system, and wrote down some payment address codes.  /* Adding */ For the sake of keeping some information safe from digital snooping, a pocket notebook and pen /* to her every day carry list became an obvious change to make in her daily routine, */ became an obvious addition to the short list of things she would carry with her every day.  At the prioritizer's suggestion, she made sure she was not wearing the glasses while dealing with setting these things up so that it would not have access to information that could be used against her, such as by seizing control of her Stater assets once she had them.

Another half hour of searching found someone willing to sell Stater for US dollars anywhere in the Inland Empire.  She sent a message via encrypted application on her laptop to ask about buying a small amount of Stater, and received a response almost immediately.  It succinctly suggested a meeting place in a police station parking lot.

She stared at the message.  "Is making this kind of exchange near a police station a good idea?"

The prioritizer said "You should research this."

Another fifteen minutes satisfied them both.  It seemed like a way to protect someone exchanging larger sums of cash or physical goods from thieves.  The nature of the exchange could be easily obscured from exterior police station cameras while providing significant deterrence to acts of violence.

/* "Yes.  That is more useful for your safety than the other party's, because you are bringing cash.  There is nothing technically illegal about this exchange, the monetary quantity is low enough that it is not likely to be a */

Alley prepared everything for the meeting, then found herself with a few hours to kill.  She realized she hadn't eaten dinner, and decided that was a good start to using up that time.  She read a book, researched privacy technologies more, and took a nap.  Other than sleeping, nothing she did fully took her mind off the fact she was about to do something that felt a little dangerous, even though everything she knew about the situation suggested this was no more dangerous than driving to Irvine and back during high traffic periods.  That went double for the interchange between the 91 and 215 highways.

Twenty minutes after she locked her front door, she came around a corner and saw the police station ahead.  Lamp posts created widely separated islands of light in the parking lot.  One end was heavily populated with a variety of civilian vehicles, most of them huddled together to fill almost every parking space within a couple parking space rows of the building.  Beyond that, the lot was almost entirely empty.  She made a point of using her turn signal early before she pulled into the police station parking lot, passed by a clear view of the glass fronted lobby, and drove into the distant, dark outlands where painted lines were more weathered and less recently repainted.

She backed her car up to the asphalt berm curb dividing pavement from weedy neighboring lot, nose aimed back the way she'd come in.  She checked her car's touchscreen and saw it indicated she faced south by southwest; she was in the closest thing the lot had to a northwest corner, as she and the person she would meet had agreed.  /* Maybe that agreement should be worked into earlier narrative at some point, instead of mentioned in the past tense here. */

She turned off the car and opened the door for a little air circulation.  At this time of night, the air smelled pretty clear, and she let the coolness of the breeze soothe her stress.

The prioritizer's impersonal voice spoke in her ear.  "You are early."

Alley nodded.

"This is probably a good thing.  It gives you a chance to notice if something suspicious /* is going on */ occurs before your scheduled meeting time."

She straightened up a bit, banishing her moment of relaxation away.  "Right.  I should be careful about this."

"Are you prepared?"

Alley looked at the vaguely discernible biodegradable shopping bag sitting in the dark floorboards of the front passenger seat, checked the tiny pepper spray canister in her front pocket for the fourth time, and made sure the parking brake wasn't engaged.  "Yeah, I think so." /* she said. */

She waited, thinking about the fact she was sitting alone in a police parking lot, and hoped nobody would come out to ask her questions she didn't know how to answer.

She waited, thinking about the fact she was too far away from the police station doors for someone to get to her before a strong attacker could kill her, overpower her and stuff her in the trunk, or just grab her bag of money from her, and still get a head start on any police pursuit.

She waited, watching the way her breath under her mask failed to fog her glasses despite the way the air cooled the lenses, a sign of quality her old glasses did not exhibit.

................................................................................

When she was ready, she decided she had enough time to satisfy her curiosity.  She looked up the eminent domain case, and in a few minutes she learned that the county just shifted its eminent domain claim to someone else's property.  A few more minutes of searching revealed that the second property owner could not afford a lawyer for an extended court battle, and ended up having to accept the county's offer, which bought the person's late parents' home.  The second property owner ended up having to move into a weekly rental motel.

That was not the happy ending Alley wanted.

She headed out the door, mentally gnawing on the injustice of it all.



/* rewrite the above to use a park bench for the meeting, as indicated below, instead */




Alley had to check her compass again to be sure which park bench was north of the boarded up snack stand.  It turned out to be the only bench with someone sitting on it.  She glanced back toward her car in the tiny parking lot, one of only two cars there.  The other was a black late model Audi with a person in the front seat.  The windows were so darkly tinted she suspected they were illegal, so she had no idea who was sitting in the driver's seat.

As she approached the bench, she saw that a pale young red haired woman sat there in a tight green t shirt, tiny shorts, heavy black boots, a black mask, and black gloves.  Some kind of cheap synthetic drawstring bag rested on the bench beside her, and she had something like a tactical purse on her other side.  She wasn't what Alley expected in an anonymous gun parts trade.

The redhead watched steadily as Alley approached, with what turned out to be vivid green eyes.  The lack of freckles might mean she was not a natural redhead, but it also might just mean she got them removed.

................................................................................

The prioritizer told her "It is getting close to time for you to leave for your next meeting."

She checked the time and realized she was hungry.  She grabbed everything she needed, and grabbed a hat to help obscure her appearance a bit for surveillance cameras.  She bought fries and a shake at a drive through on the way, and when she finished the fries she donned her gloves at a stoplight, remembering Carmen once more and how the redhead wore gloves during the entire meeting.  /* Why is this here?  ---  I don't know why I have those dashes here. */

Once she got to the correct neighborhood for the meeting, Alley drove around the block once, then decided she should just park in the supermarket parking lot, off to the side near the alley behind the store.  Soon, she stood near the back corner of the building, masked, gloved, and hatted.  Her glasses informed her she was seven minutes early for the meeting.

She patted the reassuring bulges of the pepper spray, now in her left front pocket instead of the right, and the extending baton, in her right rear pocket.  She slung the /* drawstring */ bag of handgun frames over her shoulder by the drawstring and headed back around the corner.

Alley immediately saw a broad shouldered figure standing with an umbrella over his head, just past a steel faced employee fire escape door.  The umbrella he held in his right hand shaded most of him from the sunlight above, but as she approached the figure's features became clearer.

He was a well muscled black man, in his fifties or sixties from the look of it.  He wore neither mask nor glasses.  Around what looked like a permanent dour turn of his mouth she saw greying and close cut, but not exactly groomed, mustache and beard.    On his head she noted a black beret with some kind of unit patch on the front.  The whole beret, including the patch, looked scrupulously clean, though it appeared positively ancient.  It was worn threadbare in places, and seemed to have lost the stiffness necessary to maintain its previous sharp military shape.

The man waited and watched impassively as she approached, and she felt increasingly nervous as she got closer.  The impression of the man's solidity increased with closer proximity.  She stopped about ten feet away.  After a moment, she said "Hi."

................................................................................

The prioritizer said "I am reconsidering options, in light of new risk assessment prioritization.  This may take a few minutes."

Alley looked at the envelope of cash, then pulled out the bills and counted them again.  They added up as she expected, but the prioritizer said "Please count them again."

"What?  Why?"

"While you counted, /* it looked like at least */ one of them appeared to be thicker than standard United States federal reserve notes, and also appeared to be very new.  Perhaps some of these notes is a counterfeit.  Please count again while I watch."

Alley frowned at the stack, and started counting again.  Toward the end, she hesitated on one of the few new looking bills in the stack, with a feeling like something was wrong.

"That is the note whose thickness appears to be incorrect."

Alley pulled it out of the stack and looked closer.  It felt stiffer than most bills, but that could just be due to it being new.  She rubbed it to get a feel for its surface, and it separated into two bills.  "Oh, shit," she said.  "That scary war veteran guy accidentally gave me an extra hundred.  Fuck.  What if it wasn't an accident?  Maybe it's a test."

................................................................................

"How is that dishonest?"

Alley's lips tightened for a moment.  "I guess dishonest isn't the right word, but I'm taking advantage of him in some way that doesn't feel right.  For all I know, that hundred might end up being the difference between something bad hitting him hard at some point and not hitting him at all."

"Do you feel you owe him that consideration, personally?"

/*

"Not exactly owe him, I guess, but he hasn't done anything to hurt me or take advantage of me, or done anything else bad that I know about, so I shouldn't assume he isn't worth treating with respect."

"I will consider this when considering future prioritization strategy."

"Cool.  I'm going to send him a message now.  We can talk about

*/

"No, I guess not," she said.  "It's not like I ripped him off, or lied to him, or even pretended I didn't notice.  I really thought it was the right amount of money, and even if he hasn't really done anything to me, he did scare the crap out of me a little."

"We should discuss new plans for tomorrow, then.  I have a proposal for you to consider, if you are ready."

/*

    Ideas:





    Alley should be prompted to buy from and (or) sell to other study
    participants in ways that help her as the middleman in a deal the others
    could have handled directly for greater benefit.  She should also be
    prompted to do some internet research work for some other study
    participants as a way to make a little money, though the prioritizer should
    warn her this is a short term method of advancing her finances that will
    not likely be fruitful for long.


    Some hot guy should be part of the story, younger than Alley, and an ally of
    hers in some way.  This may be one part of an apparent potential love
    triangle with Alley and her ex.  The guy should turn out to be gay, or
    perhaps bisexual but in a committed relationship with a man at least, and
    thus not truly available at all.  The ex, of course, while potentially
    interested in getting back together with her, should neither be a lovesick
    sap nor be what Alley decides she wants.



    Up to the point where she turns him down, Alley should probably seem
    potentially interested in getting back together with Dalton, perhaps -- at
    least from his perspective.  Should she seem that way to the reader?
    Should she seem that way to herself?  However that works out, though, she
    needs to ultimately have to tell him that he is not actually what she wants
    now, and in addition -- but not as the underlying reason for the foregoing,

    of course; just as a separate fact -- she needs to walk away from him to
    follow her new path at the end, especially without dragging him into it
    because it's not the best place for him.

    More Ideas:





    Should the apparent love interest new guy who has a boyfriend (or is maybe
    just gay) be a fellow study participant?  Should he be part of her
    cyberpunk crew in the shadowrun?  Should he be a Second Realm hacker?  If
    the last of those three: Should he be her primary guide, or perhaps some
    other character who starts off on the sidelines?  Should his boyfriend be
    someone she assumes is just a friend?  This last might be especially
    appropriate if I go with the mercenary or activist shadowrun cyberpunk
    character idea.



    How does she end up in the Second Realm?  Does Dalton actually know how to
    get in touch with the Smuggler analogue?  Does Dalton have the trust, sway,
    and (or) influence to get the Smuggler guy to do a favor for him (namely,
    helping Alley out)?


    Does the old black war veteran Army Ranger guy introduce her to the Second
    Realmers?



    I think when they pick her up (because I think she should be picked up,
    unless she's just transported there by someone under more direct
    circumstances), she should be transported with a bag over her head or
    something like that.  They at first aren't going to be especially trusting
    of some new person they never met before getting a clear look at the way
    they got to their Temporary Autonomous Zone.


    I need to figure out some ideas for what will be used to provide fast
    internet access for the Temporary Autonomous Zone.  A few stacks of
    shipping containers in a dusty industrial shipping container storage yard
    (possibly with a concrete slab under them, I guess) does not seem likely to
    provide very easy access to high speed mainstream "above the waterline" or
    "above board" internet access.


    What name will I give to the Smuggler inspired guy?  Will I refer to the
    actual Smuggler in a historical context?  It feels like I probably should,
    if for no other reason than giving credit to Smugger where it's due.



    How does Alley's path shift after priority updates due to the risk
    tolerance profile change?  How will she meet the black war veteran and
    Carmen plus Cliff again later?  I kinda feel like she should.  Maybe she
    should meet the girl from the first kid's car, too, but probably not the
    kid himself again.


    Maybe the black war veteran former Army Ranger tough guy shows up again as
    a service provider, with her as a customer, when later she needs to be
    transported surreptitiously and clandestinely from one place to another,
    equivalent to what's going on with similar scenarios in other stories out

    there.  This could be a good way to get him back into the story and in
    contact with her.  She could also, then, end up having the opportunity to
    pay him back the hundred dollars he doesn't even realize she owes him.


    Perhaps something Alley could do for one of the other study participants is
    do research on people who are trying to find a particular issue of a
    particular comic book series to complete a collection, because maybe this
    other study participant is in need of money and has a comic book in
    excellent condition that could bring in some money like that.  Should Alley

    end up charging the guy then, when the guy talks to the potential buyer,
    the deal falls through, leaving the guy with no money to speak of, and in
    fact with less than when he started because he had to pay Alley?  Will this
    be a case where Alley pays the guy back, because even if she did the work
    she realizes the guy is in financial trouble and needs the money, and part
    of the reason he's in such financial trouble is that the research he paid
    her to perform -- though effective and well completed for him -- did not
    actually bear fruit for him?  Is there some possibility this will turn out

    to be bad for one or both of them if it gets back to the professor and his
    spooky spook government intelligence contractors that the prioritizer is
    cross pollinating a bit between study participants that should be kept
    separate from each other?



    Will Alley end up running a courier job on a motorcycle?  That seems fun.



    Will Alley have to bail some guy out of jail?  Perhaps a criminal of some
    kind, wanted by the police, has the money to bail out a co conspirator
    needs someone else to go in to pay the bail -- someone who is not wanted by
    the police, and thus can get away with it.  That would be fun.  The
    question is really how I should arrange for her to do this *before* she
    ends up on the lam, because afterward she's probably a bit afraid to go
    into a police station.  Perhaps the criminal paying for things has some

    half crippled old lady (or perhaps the half crippled old lady *is* the
    criminal!) talk her into paying the bail for her poor grandson or whatever
    the hell he is.  That could be extra fun, of course.  Now I just need an
    excuse for Alley to have to pay the bail under her own name instead of
    delivering payment for the half crippled old lady or something like that.
    Hell, maybe she (the old lady) pretends she is afraid of being on camera
    because the government is full of horrible people who will do bad things
    with the video, or to her, or whatever.  Maybe she's afraid of being sent
    to a nursing home that is almost prisonlike in how it runs things,
    according to the old lady's sob story.


    Maybe the lawyer of some crime boss is just arranging for her to carry the
    payment down there and drop off the bail as a courier, thus the motorcycle
    courier job.  That seems like the most likely scenario so far, but very far
    from the most fun.  If she does it with a motorcycle, though, that means
    she's doing it after she's on the lam, I think, which means I have to

    figure out how to get her to be willing to go to the place to pay bail.
    That might be a bit harder.  If she's just acting as a courier, though, she
    might just be overlooked pretty much entirely as unimportant, and thus not
    really at any risk of being identified unless her face gets on camera.
    Then again, her face getting on camera is very likely.  Perhaps the mask
    situation is going to help here.  I just need to figure out how to handle
    this.

*/




"Yeah, I think I'm ready."

"I have two broad approaches to describe.  Each offers different benefits than the other.  First, you could look into the Deliv advertisements asking for courier drivers.  Second, you could seek quality assurance work for an overseas product review automation business.  Either can begin producing income immediately and give you work experience that may help when applying for another job later."

"I guess you're asking whether I'd rather be a professional driver or work in the software industry."

................................................................................

By evening, she was done for the day, and needed to relax.  She idly skimmed through Open Marrakesh, looking for tools there, hoping to profit from cryptocurrency prices to buy the tools she could resell for dollars.  She had little success, and gave up on it until morning.

---

/* Saturday */

Alley cooked a mushroom and cheddar omelette for her breakfast.  She was halfway through it when /* she received a text message */ a sharp sound from her phone indicated an incoming message.  She checked it, and saw that it was from the professor.

"Good morning, Alethea," it read.  "Logs of your activities dropped off a couple days ago.  We aren't getting enough data to sustain the study.  Are you using the prioritizer?"

Through the ear stud in her ear, the prioritizer spoke to her.  "Perhaps full audio log redaction provides too little information for the study."

"Shit.  I can't afford to pay back the first study payment, and I still haven't really gotten anywhere with long term income plans."

................................................................................

She managed to carry out three deliveries without trouble during the day.  After dinner, she opened the application one more time and saw another request that nobody else had accepted.  The pick up location was only a five minute drive away, and it promised another delivery coming back so she could get paid for both legs of the trip.  It was a scheduled pick up time, three hours away, which also meant she would probably get a slightly higher rate for making deliveries after dark.

She accepted the job and looked up the route.  She would have to drive all the way to Huntington Beach -- and back, of course.  Annoying, she thought, but maybe lucrative.

On her way out, she brought her extending baton, along with all her usual pocket fillers.  She had forgotten all about it that day, but now she thought about how dangerous a place the world could be just beneath the relative safety of the surface activity she saw most of the time.  She was not playing the part of the middle man for a gun parts deal in an alley, but that danger could still unexpectedly surface at any time.

/* She realized, as she thought about it, */ She started the car and pulled away from the curb.  As she drove, she realized Cliff in the Audi was probably aiming a rifle at her while she talked to Carmen about sales tactics.  Alley shivered as a chill raced up her spine.

Alley found herself slowly driving down a dark residential street with most of the overhead streetlamps broken out.  She took in the sight of dilapidated old houses that all looked like trashed repo sales.  When she pulled up at the address on the courier request, a painfully thin, shirtless and barefooted man approached, wiry and pale with greasy hair and so little body fat she almost imagined she could see individual muscle fibers through the skin.  He held a box in his hands, protectively, and it looked a bit overenthusiastically taped shut.

"Be careful," the prioritizer advised her.

"Yeah."  She rolled down the window, keeping her right hand near her hip so she could grab her baton if she needed it.  The window hesitated a couple times, and she began to fear she would have to open the door to take the package, but it finally came down enough.

................................................................................

"Don't worry," he said.  "I don't bite."

"Yeah, okay," she said.  "I guess this package is for you, then."

He shrugged.  "Not exactly.  Come on in."  He stepped aside, giving her room to pass by.

Alley hesitated.  The living room ahead of her was scrupulously clean and neat, apart from a large red silicone tray on the coffee table with tools and electrical parts on it.  She stepped slowly inside, /* and looked away from */ over the darkly stained wooden furniture that looked over a century old -- armchairs, couch, table, and book cases full of books, every piece of furniture looking like it was meant to go with all the rest of them.  Even the lamps on end tables seemed part of the same set.

On the tops of the packed full book cases, overflow books stood between bronze bookends.

Her gaze settled on the man again, who closed the door and said "Have a seat.  Do you want a drink?"

/*

PICK ONE:

In the soft light of lamps under linen shades, he was starting to look less like a hardened killer running guns and more like a tough but kind grandfather.

In the soft light of lamps under linen shades, he was starting to look like a tough but kind grandfather rather than the trained, hardened killer she first took him to be.

*/





She nodded, then passed by the end table at one end of the couch and sat in an armchair, still holding the box.

"I have some bottled water, Coke, milk -- white or chocolate . . . and tea.  I'd offer a beer, but I guess you have a long drive ahead of you and won't have time to recover from the high alcohol brews I keep around here."

Alley felt her dry lips with her tongue.  "Ah . . . yeah, I guess I'm thirsty.  A Coke would be good."

................................................................................

She glanced back a couple times, and saw him keeping watch.  He only stepped inside and closed the door when she was almost at the end of his block.

When she merged onto the highway, she wondered what he thought she meant by "clients".  He hadn't even asked what kind of clients she had.  Maybe, she thought, he believed she was talking about something related to Deliv, or when she sold him handgun frames.  None of that really rang true, though.

She worried at it for a bit, then found her mind wandering and lost track of the thought.

/*

SUMMARY:

Alley should, after discussing plans with the prioritizer for what they'll do next, get up the next day and have to deal with the arrival of scary people with sunglasses who want to talk to her about the fact the prioritizer is not properly logging her activities the way they expect.  They want to know what's going on, and get a bit of a "conversation" with the prioritizer through her interface or something like that.  They should probably check out the glasses just to make sure there's nothing fishy going on with them such that they might somehow be preventing the prioritizer from properly capturing data and detecting activity and so on.  They should probably intimate that she will potentially lose her study participation payments if she doesn't allow the prioritizer further into her life to log everything she's doing and provide material they can use to analyze stuff about her and so on.

A reason for this visit is, of course, the way the prioritizer has been redacting logs to keep activities in line with Alley's goal of greater personal and digital privacy in her life, protecting her from intrusive shit from police and other law enforcement things, and others as well.

*/

---

/* Sunday */

She woke in the morning to the sound of her doorbell, quickly followed by hard rapping on her door.  She groaned and looked at the clock.  It indicated the time was just after eight thirty.  "What the fuck his this?" she asked the air.

The doorbell and knocking began again.  "Impatient, I guess."  She pulled on her pants from the previous evening and made sure she had her baton and pepper spray in her pockets.
................................................................................

They all stared at each other.

"Can I help you?" Alley asked, her voice tired, but sharp.

The woman said "You have a little hole in your shirt, there."

Alley looked where the woman pointed, and saw a hole in her Information Society shirt /* around the area of her right kidney */ over the right side of her abdomen.  The hole had been there since before her uncle gave her this shirt as a kid.

She looked back at the woman.  "Yeah," she said.  "I sleep in this thing.  Strangers don't usually get to see it."

Neither of them had the decency to look chagrined at that, but the man looked a bit disappointed about something.  Perhaps he was hoping to be more intimidating, and maybe he failed because he was distracted by the shirt.  He was certainly looking at it, like it was significant somehow.

The man spoke first, this time.  "Are you Alethea Lucas?"

................................................................................

She hit the button to lock the door, then sat on the couch and plucked her phone from the charging plate.  A message notification blinked at her.

Alley donned the prioritizer's glasses and checked her messages.  One had arrived from the professor over an hour earlier.  It told her to give the glasses to the men who would come to see her that morning with government IDs.

She looked at the door, and muttered ". . . men?"  She wondered if the professor expected different people, but this was clearly close enough.  Maybe he just meant Men In Black.

/* Without the stud in her ear, the prioritizer could not speak to her audibly, but it used text again. */

The prioritizer placed text in her field of view.  "There does not appear to be much choice in how you handle this," it said.

"Yeah, no kidding."  Alley looked at the door a moment longer, and said "There's something familiar about that guy."  She shrugged, returned to the door, and opened it once more.

The pair outside broke off in mid discussion and looked at Alley.

"Here," she said.  She pulled off the glasses and handed them to the closest of them, the man.
................................................................................

"Perhaps you should change your laptop configuration if you are concerned about government contractors becoming aware of your activities while researching them."

Alley sat back, then got up and headed to the kitchen.  "What do you think I should do to start?"

"Begin with research on OpenBSD," the prioritizer said.  "Search for information on protecting your privacy.  Information about security benefits of different operating systems suggests that OpenBSD may have the best foundation for privacy characteristics among well known projects, though default configuration may not be ideal."

/* "It appears to be a good place to start." */

As she listened, Alley pulled her last pressure cooked egg out of the fridge and peeled it.  "Yeah, okay.  That sounds good."

OpenBSD led to offshoots, other projects that forked the OpenBSD project itself or built different takes on user environments or common server types on top of it.  Projects that often got compared to OpenBSD came up, and she looked into those as well, but most of them led down blind alleys about experimental security hardened OSes of various forms that were not very suitable for her purposes.

One option, QueBSD, was based on OpenBSD and promised clean separation between pseudonymous online presences -- avoiding being tracked as a person by confusing tracking technologies into trying to track many different entities that they never correlated as a single person.  She eventually realized its approach to separating environments was just OpenBSD a cut down OpenBSD system with some extra interfaces around OpenBSD's own virtual machine management tools.  To make much use of it would involve installing other OSes on top of QueBSD in virtual machines.

Another option, Minix, seemed good for security and privacy based on some comments in a few mailing lists and forum discussions, but after digging in further she realized that most of what people said about its privacy benefits looked like either things that could be done on many other OSes, including OpenBSD, and things that were just people misunderstanding Minix reliability benefits.  It did not seem to be a particularly privacy oriented option.
................................................................................

"What do you mean?" the prioritizer asked.

"It seems like one of the best things about OpenBSD is the code audits.  I didn't even find out about how thoroughly they check out their code for problems until I got to the 'Why Maxim OS?' page, where it links to pages about the audits on it and on OpenBSD.  With that much auditing, it seems like the obvious choice for keeping governments and corporations from slipping something into the software that would undermine privacy."

"I do not know why the OpenBSD project would not present that information more prominently.  MaximOS appears to be an excellent choice for your purposes, though.  It may be a good choice for security your phone as well."

"Yeah," Alley said, "I saw that info about the mobile tech version of /* the operating system */ MaximOS."

"The devices sold by the company that develops MaximOS may be a good choice as well."

"Sure, if I could afford to buy one."

She sat and thought, idly clicking through pages on the MaximOS site.  She stopped on the main page and read the slogan at the top out loud:

................................................................................

"A cardinal system is like using a system of one to five stars to assign value to a product when you rate it on the e commerce site where you ordered it.  An ordinal system is like deciding between the two products in the first place, because it only tracks which options you value more than others, not some static numeric set of value levels."

"What if I value them both the same?" Alley asked.

"That seems such an unlikely case that it can be dismissed immediately.  Even from one second to the next, values may change, so fluctuations would settle into a condition of differing ordinal values for any two items.  In addition, no two products are truly identical, though the shopper may not have enough information to know which that person would choose if fully informed."

/* "Don't I still have to prefer one over the other to choose it, if I can't just get both, or if having two would be a waste?" */

"What about when I just can't decide between two options, and I can't get both of them?  Isn't that proof of being able to value two things equally?"

"If you cannot choose between them based on your own knowledge about the products, and they are substitutes or equivalents rather than complementary or orthogonal to each other, you will likely either keep seeking more information or decide the difference is not worth effort to identify.  In the latter case, you would likely choose the product that is, at that exact moment, the easiest to order.  Thus, one becomes a higher priority than the other, not because of a quality particular to the thing, but a quality of your circumstances.  It receives a greater ordinal value position based on momentary convenience.  In short, convenience and elimination of the stress of decision paralysis becomes the deciding factor as a value greater than the difference between discernible product values."

"What if I put off buying something I want more to get something I want less, to get the second thing more quickly?"

"This is another case of a third value coming into play, such as buying the lesser value item when you need it and postponing the greater value item because it is not as quickly important to acquire.  This is also an example of my main purpose, prioritization strategy.  Lower value goals should not prevent achievement of higher value goals, but when they serve as facilitators for the higher value goals they should be pursued first to ensure greater success later for the higher value goals."
................................................................................

"Fuck.  If you turn out to be what they want, you'll probably make them even more effective at screwing people over in large numbers so they can get bigger Christmas bonuses."

"That is a possibility," the prioritizer said.

Alley grabbed a box of adhesive bandages from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and sat on the couch to wrap one around her fingernail.  She opened her laptop and looked at the discussion on the darknet site.  "Okay," she said, "maybe I can do this."

The process of installing MaximOS turned out to be easier and faster than she expected.  Organized documentation /* that */ led her through the setup process after installation for the kind of computing environment she wanted.  It included suggestions for different user needs and short, clear explanations for why each choice existed.  It helped her get to a point where the system was more than adequately locked down for Alley's needs, in her own estimation.  The prioritizer concurred.

She quickly found that MaximOS gave her tools for quickly creating user profiles in the OpenBSD native "prison" lightweight container system, kind of a more thoroughly sandboxed reimagining of the FreeBSD "jail" system, so that to any network connected computer each of these profiles looked like completely different systems, and she could switch between prison "cells" -- the name it used for configured user profile environments -- with a simple keyboard shortcut.

She played around with this for a little while, getting used to how it worked in practice, then wiped all the practice profiles in an instant.  She created a new profile and opened its cell.  Within it, she used anonymized routing to visit the website for COIN Corp and looked around.  Finding nothing very useful that way, she opened other cells with different profiles and started searching for references to COIN Corp on employment related professional social networking sites.  On those sites, she started finding the accounts of COIN Corp employees.

Corporate officers, accountants, system administrators, and policy agents -- whatever those were -- all appeared in her searches.  She checked the company website again, looking at the employment listings, and found one for policy agents.  It spoke of interfacing with the public, performing information field research, and collaborating with local and federal law enforcement among the job's responsibilities.  More importantly, perhaps, it included a smiling model in a black suit with a white shirt broken into vertical bars by thin stripes of dark red.

Her searches focused on policy agents after that.  She launched a custom program -- which she had to copy over from her home backup brick -- she paid someone to to write for her in the days of her greatest success as a freelance internet researcher.  The program took a series of API endpoint addresses -- web URLs, addresses that provided formatted data intended for other programs to read, rather than providing human readable webpages -- and searched them for data records that matched search criteria she typed into the search parameters window.  Among the criteria were those API endpoints, a list of employment resources on the internet that she had used for searches on behalf of clients before.

She knew the program would take a while to collect its results. In an ideal world, it could be done with the long list of API endpoints she gave it in a couple minutes.  In the real world, her program had to space out requests to avoid getting blocked by the target sites as abusing bandwidth, and it could take anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours.  She decided to take a break for a snack, then she went for a walk as she waited for the program.

The event of the last few days played out in her mind as she walked.  It was more like a jumble of nonlinearly connected bits and pieces, ordered more by emotional significance than any chronological flashback montage.  As she /* finally */ approached her front door again she dwelled on the question of what George's friend, or client, or whatever, was doing with all those handgun frames.  She had no idea how to make that fit with George's charitable custom prosthetic fabrication for a little girl.  Sure, he said the girl's father would receive the guns, but that said nothing about how anyone would actually use those guns after they got delivered.  What would they use the guns to accomplish -- or to destroy?

In theory, she supported the right to keep and bear arms, even if the federal government had gotten the Supreme Court to offer such broad exceptions to the Second Amendment and loose definitions of a "state of emergency" that the Second Amendment itself was nearly toothless.  Her support for the idea of the right to keep and bear arms, however, was not the same as thinking it was a good idea for some kinds of people to have guns.  She suspected that if someone was buying illegally assembled firearms by the bagful they probably did not intend to put those guns to a good, ethical purpose.  Even psychopathic mob hitmen could have young, disabled daughters, after all.

She stood with her hand on the doorknob of her front door, lost in thought, worried about what she had helped facilitate by the act of purchasing those printed handgun frames to resell them to George.  Did she want to ask him about them?  She wasn't sure whether that was a great idea, either.

/*


    It feels very much like this moment should turn into some kind of encounter
    here, with someone snapping Alley out of her reverie by saying something
    like "Hey, Alley.  Did you get lost at your own front door?" Some kind of
    scene must commence at that point, of course, in which Alley is shown to
    know people who like her and consider her a friend.  Perhaps some
    revelations for the readers (via conversation about shared background
    knowledge) would come out in such a scene.  After completing this
    encounter, Alley would return to her tasks.


*/ /*




    Describe Alley finding information on one of the two agents, specifically
    the male, who turns out to wear the name Cole Brewer.  Cole Brewer will
    turn out to be an old Army veteran buddy of her late uncle's.  Insert some
    earlier reference to something familiar about the agent, so that now she
    can realize why he seemed familiar.  She should remember him being a very

    good friend of her uncle's, and I should figure out whether she liked him
    back in the day or thought there was something creepy about him, or what.
    She should be surprised that Cole is now working in a job like this, given
    his connection to her anti authoritarian uncle who went off grid and
    ultimately died in some kind of raid by federal agents or investigators on
    his property which was, quite decidedly, not up to code.

*/




"Jesus," she said again /* because she will probably have said "Jesus" fairly recently by this point */.  "I just can't believe he ended up working for these guys."

"Perhaps he was sent here because of your prior acquaintance.  That might be part of their tactical approach to dealing with you, in an attempt to induce you to be more compliant."

"Maybe.  It's weird he acted like he didn't know me, though.  If nothing else, he should have recognized my name."

................................................................................

"If that is the case, creating the impression that you would be an ideal candidate for COIN Corp to recruit may be even more important as a means of ensuring you have some time and opportunity to find an acceptable solution to your present predicament."

"Yeah."  She frowned.  "He was so much like my uncle, so set against things like a surveillance state society and authoritarian rule, that it's kind of inconceivable that this is what he would be doing now.  It doesn't make any sense.  How could he just become everything he hated like this?  My uncle must be getting pretty restless in his grave over this."

"Perhaps he was not quite the person you believed him to be."



/* "It's like Pascal's wager in reverse, I guess.  Instead of trying out living like a Christian for a while and growing to believe it, you're forced into living like a Christian then giving yourself the excuse to start believing in it after you're used to it." <- This is a terrible description of the idea of Pascal's wager "in reverse", and desperately needs rewriting. */








She sat, silently thinking.  "I guess it's like Dalton would say: that giving people a reason to act differently, and an excuse to think of how they're acting as good instead of evil, you can make people accept whatever they thought of as evil as, somehow, good now.  If it's a way to get people to justify themselves, they might just completely reverse their beliefs about good and evil without even realizing it.  It's like Pascal's wager in reverse, because the target doesn't get asked to try out acting a particular way to see if it becomes a habit first, and a belief system afterward.  Instead, the target gets seduced into acting in a particular way without realizing it, then gets introduced to excuses for why that's actually the moral thing to do, and the person latches onto those excuses as strong beliefs to avoid having to confront the idea they fell into immoral behavior that hurts people."

/* insert something about Getting George's telephone number */

George picked up on the third ring.  "Hello?"

"It's Alley, from last night."

"Oh!  Hi.  It's good to hear from you.  Did everything go okay last night with that delivery?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Good.  So . . . /* what did you want to say now */ why did you call?"

She hesitated a moment before saying "I wanted to ask you about your work, or at least the stuff I've seen."

"Are you talking about the prosthetic arm, or about the other stuff?"

"The other stuff."

................................................................................

"Well, by the time you could get out here, if you're still back in San Bernardino County, I'd be ready to talk to you, or I could come to you, if you want to meet closer to home.  That's assuming you want to meet right away, this evening."

"Yeah, tonight's good."

"Do you want to see if you can get a Deliv job out this way to make it worth your while?"

"Sure, /* I can check on that */ that sounds like a great idea.  I'll send a text when I know how it's going to go."

/* "That sounds great.  I'll see you later." */

"Good.  I'll see you then."

"See you."

After dropping off six boxes of books at a used bookstore in Newport Beach, she headed north into Huntington Beach and made her way to the curb in front of George's house again.  By the time she reached his door, he had already opened it for her.  He must have been watching for her arrival.

................................................................................

He nodded.  "Dalton [ Schaeffer - Hearst ]."

"Yeah."  She looked at him, wary.

"I guess I can see why you don't want to bring that up much.  He's a controversial figure."

/* "Yeah, he is.  I can't even bring him up around anyone, really.  Either people hate me because I got engaged to him, or they hate me for leaving him." */

"Yeah, he is.  There isn't really anyone I can talk to about him.  Either people hate me because I got engaged to him, or they hate me for leaving him."

"I could see that," George said.  "I won't hate you for either reason."

"Thanks," she said.  "That's good to hear."

"I'll just be completely straightforward with you about what I think about him, and you can decide whether you want anything more to do with me.  I won't hold it against you, whatever you decide, but I guess it wouldn't matter if you didn't want to be around me any longer anyway."
................................................................................

She nodded.  "That sounds good."

"It'll give us a few more minutes to hang out without talking about anything so serious before you go home and think the hard thoughts about what you're going to do."  He got up and started toward the kitchen.

"Thanks."

/*

George really needs to be less ignorant of the possible dangers of Alley's AR glasses.  He knows this technology exists.  He's not just going to blithely go on talking about a bunch of insane stuff without noticing there's some danger of it getting out because of the technology people carry around with them.

*/

/*

This might be where George provides some backup for Alley as she picks up a Deliv job, or something like that.

*/






Alley looked at the cover of the first book George had given her.  She wrinkled her nose at the no frills cover, a cheaply made trade paperback binding with only a black border and black text on a stark white background.  It had the look of some vanity press thing, where nobody had even bothered to really design the cover at all.

She read the full cover to herself.

"An Agorist Primer

................................................................................

The pages were numbered, starting with 1.  The first chapter began on a page numbered 4.

She closed the book again and read the cover once more.

"Maybe Sam Konkin is a friend of his," she said, meaning a friend of George's.

/* The preface page was numbered 1.  The last page of the index -- once she looked -- was 50. */

She looked at the first page again, and the number one.  Books never started with a page number of one.  She flipped to the end, and saw that the last page showed the number 50, on the last page of the book's index.  At least it had an index, but that meant however many pages of index it had could be subtracted from the already minuscule length of the book's content.

The prioritizer said "This is a very short book."

"Yeah," Alley said.  She ran her fingers down the disintegrating spine, held together by off white cloth tape.  Someone had written on the tape with a black marker:

"An Agorist Primer, by SEK3"
................................................................................

"Uh, yeah, sure," she said.

"Thank you."

She shrugged and opened the book.  Apparently, a computer program wanted to read the book, too.  /* It must seem like a good place to get prioritization strategy or judge her desired goals, or something like that. */  "Do you think this is going to be a good place to get prioritization strategies, or judge my desired goals and how to prioritize them, or something like that?"

"It is possible," the prioritizer said.  "Its author proclaims /* itself */ to be a guide to strategy, and effective strategy must account for prioritization."

"Yeah, okay," she said, and opened the book again.  The introduction began:

"Agorism can be defined simply: it is thought and action consistent with freedom.  The moment one deals with 'thinking', 'acting', 'consistency', and especially 'freedom', things get more and more complex."

It went on to assert a sort of scientific basis, a connection to the idea of libertarianism "consistently and without the practical contradiction", and an inherent practicality of its own that elevated it above theoretical ideologies that were not useful in "real life".

................................................................................

The book continued.  "Reality is our standard.  Nature is our lawgiver."

Her skepticism fortified itself, but she continued reading, determined to give the book an honest, fair chance to convince her of something.

As she got further into the book, Alley found herself absorbed.  She stopped to think about passages when she read them, flipped back to reread previous pages, and opened her laptop to start taking notes when she could not help herself.  It was fascinating.

It took her much longer to read than she expected.  Hours had passed, by the time she finished.  It had made explicit a /* theory */ manner of approaching the world, and made the acts prescribed by the book feel not simply justified and pragmatic, but also obvious in retrospect.  /* like never before */

She wrote fragmentary essays as a way to explore her thoughts on the subject.  It excited her, and /* fired up */ ignited the fires of her imagination.  She realized she had practiced agorism already.

The book utterly lacked any suggestions for how to get started in a concrete, pragmatic manner, though, which she found disappointing.  She had herself halfway engaged in agorism for years, by choosing her career path as an independent internet researcher who helped her clients penetrate the barriers of search bubbles and poorly mediated online experiences.  /* search interfaces */

Recently, she had more fully practiced agorism without realizing it by doing something as simple as buying a bag of 3D printed handgun frames from one person and selling them to another.  Thus, in the last few days, she had more directly engaged in agorism.  If not for the prioritizer, though, she realized reading the book and wanting to do what it said would have just left her feeling adrift, without a sense of how to get started.

This felt good, and she thought about the fact she could do more of the same.  She could have an idealistic life and a pragmatic life at the same time, without conflict between the two aspects.  In a way, the prioritizer study was what had made this plan, and this realization, possible.

She then began to think about why she was not already doing exactly that.  First, she found her livelihood as an independent internet researcher evaporating from under her feet like the surface ice of a frozen lake directly sublimating into vapor as she stood on it; she was no longer able to use that as the foundation for a safe and enjoyable life.  She had, at times, blamed her failing independent internet researcher business on the fallout from Dalton's changing political opinions and his own infamy being reflected onto her.  The popular hatred for Dalton in some circles induced her to hide from the public, which hurt her visibility to potential clients.  When she considered the facts, however, she always realized the real problem was that the world was moving on.  Her work was becoming irrelevant.

Nobody cared enough about getting all the information about anything any longer, except for certain people who could afford to have their own pet research assistants or otherwise get what they needed in - house without having to hire an independent researcher like her.

Her more recent, her more fully agoristic actions were /* also */ dangerous, and thus possibly worse than merely irrelevant and doomed.  Despite being technically legal, they were exactly the kinds of activities COIN Corp would use to hang her anyway.

Despite all the promise of living a pure, good, and free life, all the assurance of practicality beyond what most ideological theories could hope to provide, it turned out the whole idea was -- at least for her -- not only pretty impractical, but wholly unpracticable.

The book, short and mostly to the point, was enticing in what it promised, and George seemed like a perfect example of how its advice might actually be good, a great success story.  She realized it was definitely not for everyone, though.  More directly and specifically, it was not for her.

The excitement it injected into her refused to fully fade /* , though */.  She got ready for bed, slid under the covers, and tossed about for a long time in the dark.  Unable to sleep, she rose again, picked up the other book, and sat on the couch in her fading old Information Society shirt to read.

This book contained very little theory, and a whole lot of practice -- essentially the opposite of the previous book, in that regard.  It explained how to prepare the minimum gear needed to run out the door in an emergency and still survive without anything else to start.  It gave advice in being invisible to surveillance and pursuers sometimes, temporarily identifiable to them other times, and simply absent the rest of the time.  It offered solutions to the problem of being cornered or caught.  It directed the reader to information about acquiring or creating the resources one does not already possess.

In short, it gave a lot of good advice for staying out of the grasp of people who might mean the reader harm, possibly including a government, its agents, and its allies.

She made notes while reading this book, too, but she also skimmed parts of it where she had not skimmed the other book.  This time, though, the notes included concrete actions she could take in the morning.

................................................................................

She also kept an eye out for trades she could make on the side, moving things between Open Marrakesh and normal online classified ad deals.  She stayed away from some of the more lucrative deals she could have made involving Open Marrakesh, though, because they were too close to the edge of the law.  Some of them stepped all the way over the line to overt illegality, and she made sure to avoid going anywhere near any of those.

The cargo area in Alley's hybrid hatchback had always seemed bigger on the inside than the outside, the vehicle's best feature in her opinion.  She made good use of it that day.  A surprisingly complete collection of emergency gear got tightly packed into a layer in the cargo area with a tarp over it all.  She even included all of her old motorcycle riding gear in that layer of stuff, on a whim.

She thought the motorcycle riding gear could be useful to have as some kind of protective gear in some emergency scenarios, and it also freed up some room in her coat closet.  She had not ridden a motorcycle in a couple years, and it was just taking up space.  The only part of her protective riding gear that did not make the cut was her helmet, which would not have fit as neatly and securely as everything else she packed into the vehicle.



/* I should insert something about buying Stater with her cache of cash before getting to the part about buying tools.  She needs the cryptocurrency for those deals. */





By the end of the day, she was exhausted.  She managed to buy more Stater cryptocurrency, complete six Deliv jobs, almost complete her bugout vehicle kit, and buy a bunch of top brand hand tools at good prices from Open Marrakesh without depleting her Stater total much.  She noticed hand tools from the right brands were always in high demand on the online classified ad sites.  She decided to see how many of those tools she would be able to sell off the next day.

She felt exhausted but accomplished by the end of the day, and she realized a lot of what she did would not have been possible in such a short time for her to accomplish so quickly /* that's redundant */ without the aid of the prioritizer ensuring she did not miss opportunities and planned her day's activities such that performing some of the earlier tasks made it easier to perform others later.  As she pulled up in front of the house, she laid her head back against the headrest of her seat and thought about the sudden significance of the professor's study in her life.

"I really feel like maybe things are going to be alright for me," she told the prioritizer.  "Professor Goulet really came up with something good, I think."

................................................................................

"Although the probability of the risk is uncertain at this stage, the severity is still high, and there are reasons to believe the probability may be higher than would be wise to ignore.  Are you certain you do not wish to make clear plans to remove yourself as a possible stationary target?"

"Yes, I'm sure.  It's ridiculous.  It'll never happen."

/* Tuesday */

/*



Alley needs to do some things here.  It will probably involve some courier work, possibly including that thing where she drops off bail for someone.

*/ /*





    Alley does some more courier work.  She does some more currency arbitrage
    work.  She might need to drop off bail for someone in all of this stuff.




*/ /*





At some point, she should set up a meeting for an exchange in a private conference room at a co working space.  Someone should recognize her and ask whether she's meeting a client, to which she replies vaguely in a positively interpretable fashion without literally confirming that assumption with her words.








I wanted the person who greets her to say something that raises some factoid of her life, but I'm not sure any longer what I had in mind.  Did it have anything to do with getting out of Dalton's shadow?



Does the person she's meeting recognize her connection to Dalton?



*/

/*



    After an announcement by the Federal Reserve, she follows the prioritizer's
    advice to put a bunch of her extra United States dollars in cash into
    Stater.  After a moment more of discussion, she puts some of her bank
    account into VaporCash, known as a good place to put money if you can't
    hide the source but want to hide where it goes, just because the news
    suggests that there will be a bonanza in general cryptocurrency investment,

    which means it's a good time to trade cash for cryptocurrencies -- and, if
    you're going to move money from United States dollars fiat currency via a
    trackable channel into a cryptocurrency just to benefit from currency
    movements it might be a good idea to hide your tracks so you can keep your
    money from being tracked along the way, and claim whatever you like in an
    emergency about where the money might have gone.


    During all this, the prioritizer has Alley make some deals with other
    prioritizer study participants, though she may not know they're dealing
    with fellow study participants.



*/

/*



## Crossing The Threshold:




Alley has a dream about her home being raided, and herself getting getting questioned at length about there being too much cash in her home.  She is ultimately released, but the money is gone, taken under "civil forfeiture" laws.  She shakes it off as a weird dream.





In the morning, she resists what she sees as "dangerous" activities and instead just tries to get work.  She feels she has enough money to get by at this point, but will have to figure out how to actually use it without getting in trouble for tax evasion or something like that, reading her dream as her subconscious just worrying about the long term implications of having money of dubious origins.





She gets a message from Zeke telling her that she is going to have to pay the damages and, when she asks what damages he means, Zeke sends her video of her home being raided by armed men in tactical gear, with the two agentlike people that had visited and questioned her earlier supervising the raid.  She recognizes the bag they carry out, which contained her stash of dubious origin cash.  She has a near panic attack, but (with some calm aid from the prioritizer) informs Zeke she'll head home right away.  The prioritizer then discusses options with her, and urges her to stall.  She tells Zeke something came up and she'll be later than expected -- "work stuff" -- and may not even make it back until the next day.  She then Faraday bags her phone and makes a deal on Craigslist (or something like it).  She sells her car for cryptocurrency, sells some cryptocurrency for cash, and buys a motorcycle.















Somewhere in the midst of this, she does some research on the people raiding her place, and this helps her decide to go along with the stalling and vehicle swapping.  She arranges a place to stay for the night via some barter ish resources, and she works on ideas for how to get out of whatever is going on.  The prioritizer convinces her she needs more help, from someone with resources and connections.  Ultimately, this leads to contacting Dalton and hiding from anyone watching her home.  Technically, she is not targeted by law enforcement, and has no responsibility to report, and California law is unlikely to side with Zeke over nonpayment of damages caused by a corporate home invader.














None of this means she's safe from that corporation, though.  The Technocrat would totally find a way to make her disappear if so desired.  How does this get conveyed?  There must be some information about the person and/or the corporation to give this impression.




Does she learn that the Technocrat was involved in the disappearance of her uncle at this point?  If so, this could become the first pinch point.




*/

/*



    One day, while out running errands, disaster strikes.  Her car has
    mechanical trouble, and she has to go spend some money at an auto repair
    shop.  While there, Alley gets a message from George.  The message is about
    his home being "burned", and him having to drop off the grid.  He tells her
    to run, if she hasn't already been caught, and says he'll try to get in

    touch with her very soon, using a different way to contact her because he
    was going to ditch all his old contact methods, but that she should run and
    hide and maybe find herself an ally who can and will help her.



*/

"It looks like I should turn here," Alley said, checking the map /* on her augmented reality heads up display */ shown in the HUD on her glasses, and rolled up to a stop at an intersection.

"Continue ahead," the prioritizer said.  "It is better to avoid police checkpoints."

Alley hesitated as the light turned green, then drove on.  "Okay, yeah.  That makes sense."  As they passed the intersection, she looked to her right, and saw half a dozen police officers in black around the barricade half a block away.  They wore helmets and bulky body armor, each of them armed with some kind of long arm -- rifles, shotguns, or a third option /* something */ she did not recognize.

"How am I getting there if I don't go through a checkpoint?" Alley asked.  "The drop off is in the hot zone."

/*



    Here, the prioritizer tells Alley what they'll do to get past the barricade
    perimeter.  It probably ties in with some kind of means smugglers use to
    run the blockades, though how the prioritizer knows about it is beyond me
    at this point.  Perhaps the prioritizer simply reasons that there are
    people who are prepared to smuggle people and objects across blockades in
    urban hot zones, and that there must be a way to contact them even if you
    have never done so before and don't know how to get in touch with those

    smugglers.  Alley might look up something with her Axiom via anonymized
    distributed networks.  At this point, she might also contact George for
    help getting in touch with a smuggler, though, instead of getting someone
    online.  In fact, doing so might be what led to George getting raided, and
    her as well.  It could be that the raid was planned for shortly after when
    she would have arrived at home, and only the fact her car broke down saved
    her from that fate.  I could also ensure that, actually, the prioritizer
    manipulated Alley by arranging for the car to break down somehow, knowing
    (somehow) that Alley was in significant danger of being raided at that
    time.  This is kind of a big decision, though.  Should that be how it
    happened, or should it actually just be luck?  Such luck often feels wrong,
    improbable, in stories.  I just need good explanations for the plotting to
    work out in a way that readers might find plausible and right.

*/




"Just ask for Smuggler," George said.

---

Alley donned her motorcycle jacket, stuffed her gloves in the jacket pockets, /* and */ strapped on her low profile pack, and locked her car.  She looked at the front of the house, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly.  She walked up to the front door and pressed the old fashioned doorbell on a house that looked like it had been built in the 1970s.  It looked like it might not have been maintained since the 1980s.

# Death Alley

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *








 *  NOTES: IDEAS FOR WOPR OPENING                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Action threads played out endlessly, throwing E M P optimized          *
 *  warheads toward localized relay clusters identified as economic        *
 *  production facilitators.  Analysis threads searched for crosstalk by   *
 *  uncompromised ally systems that fed into hostility drift; stopping     *
 *  the hemorrhagic defection of military systems based on short term war  *
................................................................................

At the mention of the old insult Dalton haters used to call her, Alley's eyes flicked from the woman to the maskless man, and she realized that wasn't a smile.  It was a sneer.

Fuck.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Heading home from her interview, talking to her mother, either in      *

 *  Oklahoma or Nebraska or maybe even Wyoming, Alley should probably      *
 *  call the interview a "fucking disaster" and get scolded passive        *
 *  aggressively for profanity.  She does not want to move to her          *
 *  mother's state any more than her father's -- probably either Michigan  *
 *  or . . . something -- she will resist urging from her mother to do     *
 *  so, based on cost of living and the many numerous job opportunities    *
 *  for her there being complicit in the creation of the oppressive        *
 *  dominant order.                                                        *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */


## back to Alley's narrative

The mission district of Riverside slid past the hybrid's windows, getting more and more run down as Alley drove toward Moreno Valley.

"So, how did your interview go?" her mother asked, via Alley's hands free earpiece.
................................................................................

"Everything you need to know to get started is in the box.  Your direct deposits will begin immediately.  I'm told the funds from your first payment will be available in your account about ten minutes after you apply your signature to the last form on that tablet."  He tapped the tablet's bezel.  "Of course, if you violate the terms of the study, the money must all be refunded."

Alley's eyes slid down to the first form page displayed on the tablet.  "Okay," she said.

"You can sign digitally using any standard signing service, or on the screen."  He removed his stylus from his mouth again, and offered it.

She looked at its glistening dampness.  "No, thanks.  I'll use D-Sign."

---

The window of her car rolled down smoothly and easily on the first try while she drove away from the university, as if to reward her decision to sign up for the study.  Twenty minutes later, Alley caught herself staring blankly out the open window of her car, eyes glazed.  She shook her head, then wiped her hand across her face as if to clear cobwebs from her forehead and eyelashes.  She turned her focus away from the scorched trunks of trees on the highway crowding slopes that forced all traffic eastward here to endure the gauntlet of I 91 if they wished to make the passage through the interregnum between Orange County and the Inland Empire.  To her right, she saw the huge illuminated cross standing alone at the top of a high slope, an improbable survivor of the wildfires.  The faint scent of burning still lingered in the air, after all this time.

She left behind the palatial HOA aristocracy of Orange County, and drove onward into the seemingly endless expanse of the Inland Empire's domain.  Past the pseudo burbs, through the failed gentrification project of Riverside, she made her way homeward in the dusty, wiry, jackal hungry belly of the Empire, and wondered for the thousandth time what tyrant would ever want to be emperor of such a place.

................................................................................

If the prioritizer she signed up to test could actually help, maybe she could stop entertaining these defeated thoughts of running to her mother.  Maybe, if she could get ahead of things, she could even move somewhere else entirely, somewhere she'd actually like to live.

Massachusetts never even crossed her mind.

## The Call To Adventure:

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley must undertake a program of reinventing herself to overcome her  *

 *  present circumstances.  She takes her little box of prioritizer stuff  *
 *  home with her and sits down in the living room with it.  She sets      *
 *  everything on her charger and starts reading through the directions.   *
 *  After charging, she pairs devices, dons the glasses, and starts        *
 *  interacting with the prioritizer.  She ends up getting a wireless      *
 *  keyboard and typing answers rather than activate the audio input.      *
 *  The prioritizer setup asking her to activate mic input leads to its    *
 *  identification of privacy as a goal.                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The prioritizer has her go through her inbox and asks questions about  *

 *  job postings.  It ends up eliminating all job postings as              *
 *  incompatible with Alley's goals and values.  It suggests she deal      *
 *  with important tasks (e.g. paying rent) and otherwise take the day     *
 *  off if she has no other ideas for making money, and that she wear her  *
 *  new HUD all the time so it can learn more about her goals and values.  *
 *  It walks her through winding down for a good night's sleep and         *
 *  charges overnight.                                                     *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The next day it has her look at Craigslist postings (or something to   *

 *  that effect).  It has her take note of ads where someone is looking    *
 *  for something, then helps her find things to satisfy those wants.      *
 *  After a few hours, she is able to come up with a plan to complete a    *
 *  couple of trades by the end of the day, resulting in acquiring a few   *
 *  hundred dollars' profit.  The initial money input gets set aside, and  *
 *  the next day she starts the same process, but this time with           *
 *  (monetarily) riskier trades.  She ends up with an item the requester   *
 *  doesn't want, and another that makes back enough so her few hundred    *
 *  dollars is only reduced to about a hundred dollars, rather than to     *
 *  nothing.                                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  It directs her to look elsewhere, and finds a barter network.  The     *

 *  prioritizer walks her through setting up anonymization for a           *
 *  cryptocurrency wallet and for communications in the barter network     *
 *  "as a privacy precaution".  She makes a deal to trade the otherwise    *
 *  unwanted item for cryptocurrency, but it must be transacted in         *
 *  person.                                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The trade goes smoothly that evening, and she takes a slight loss at   *
 *  the cryptocurrency's going rate.  The optimizer guides her in trading  *

 *  that cryptocurrency for another that makes it very difficult to track  *
 *  trades.  It then has her check for people liquidating                  *
 *  cryptocurrencies, and she makes a plan to buy another cryptocurrency   *
 *  with the thirty dollars left over from earlier trades.                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She wonders whether it will just get rid of all her profits.           *

 *                                                                         *
 *  She goes along with it, remembering the fact that she is getting       *
 *  income from the study.  Later that same day, the person -- evidently   *

 *  desperate -- agrees to meet in person.  The prioritizer directs her    *
 *  to look up information leading her to choose a police station parking  *
 *  lot as a place to do business, and she specifies that as the site of   *
 *  the transaction the next morning.  That, too, goes off without a       *
 *  hitch, though she finds the person a bit off putting and perhaps       *
 *  dangerous seeming in his evident desperation and twitchiness.          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She goes home to relax.  She idly goes through Craigslist some more,   *


 *  reads, and ends her day.                                               *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

Alley sat on the couch, reading the instructions that came in the box with her new HUD glasses.  She dropped the unfolded instruction sheet and looked from the new glasses to her old glasses, both sitting on the charging plate on her end table.  The new glasses showed a glint of green by the right temple hinge; they were done charging.  She plucked them off the plate, looked at them as the green spark faded, then hooked the earpieces over her ears and settled the glasses on the bridge of her nose.

Text appeared to float in the air before her: "PAIR WITH PHONE"

She picked up her phone and followed instructions.  When the pairing message faded away, a new message appeared: "ENTER SUBJECT ID:"

................................................................................

No.

"DO YOU WISH TO DISABLE AUDIO INTEGRATION?"

Yes.









The questions kept coming, one after another after another, about herself and her preferences -- age, pronouns, financial information such as bank balances, employment status, work experience, mailing and home addresses, and so on.  She hesitated less and less when she found some question or other invasive, tiring of the act of debating the issue as time went on.  She considered what she knew about how easily and unobviously her ANTAS Jobs account must already have eaten away at most of the careful perimeter she used to maintain around her privacy, or at least whatever of it wasn't eroded away by the simple fact of living in ANTAS' and the US government's contemporary world.

She realized the prioritizer could not even do its job without access to the cameras embedded in her new glasses, and seriously debated whether to end the study and return the glasses.  She set aside the glasses and agonized over it, as she prepared some green tea, then flipped through video streams on her television.  "That ship already sailed," she finally muttered to herself, and donned the glasses again.

Eventually, in the same terse and caps locky way of everything it asked, the prioritizer pursued a line of interrogation following her mention of joining ANTAS Jobs by telling her to go through the past few days of her incoming messages.  She paged through them, all two hundred or so, looking at each for a few seconds before skipping to the next as directed by the text displayed in her field of view.  She assumed the prioritizer recorded everything it saw through the glasses, including the red X marks where she rejected a posting and the rejection responses she received about the available job notices she accepted.

She ate ramen with titanium Japanese style chopsticks as she worked her way through the prioritizer's demands, and after a couple hours she began to wonder whether this study was really worth it.  Finally, though, the prioritizer just told her to go about the rest of her day while wearing the glasses, as if it was not there.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  The prioritizer probably needs to know:                                *

 *                                                                         *
 *  * Alley's connections (past) to Dalton                                 *
 *  * Alley's objections to working for "the" government                   *
 *  * Alley's objections to working for optimizer developers               *
 *  * Alley's preference for privacy rights and free speech                *
 *  * Alley's work history (or lack thereof)                               *
 *  * Alley's preferred future living conditions                           *

 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */


## Refusing The Call:

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  get initial analysis from the prioritizer                              *
 *  -> make some planning decisions or put them off to some extent         *

 *  -> do stuff that seems profitable but very short term at first         *
 *  -> escalate these one off jobs in ways that make her nervous           *
 *  -> meet someone who recognizes her by way of Dalton and panic a bit    *
 *  -> back off from a deal                                                *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* Wednesday */

Alley was up for an hour the next day before she remembered the prioritizer study.  She grabbed the glasses, then picked up her old glasses off the charging plate and put them in the box for the new glasses.

Five minutes later, the prioritizer had her sitting on the couch with her wireless keyboard, looking at options for goal prioritizing strategies.



/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  * Alley could get a shit job that does not make enough money to        *
 *    justify the drive, but does offer future recent work experience at   *
 *    a "regular" job while she collects direct deposits from her study    *
 *    participation.  Is this a commute?  Is it a driving job, such as     *
 *    deliveries or courier work?  Courier work probably doesn't fit this  *
 *    idea, but maybe a gig economy delivery job would qualify.            *


 *                                                                         *
 *  * Alley could get a remote job doing something legal but very          *
 *    sketchy, which would net her more income than the driving option.    *
 *    This could also give her more mobility for the sake of moving        *

 *    somewhere "better" to live.                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  * Alley could sign up for training in a professional trade and         *
 *    perhaps get some kind of job placement assistance as part of the     *
 *    deal (plus, of course, some crushing debt that she'll spend decades  *

 *    paying off).                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  * Alley could skip job and training options and just do some deals.    *
 *    She could actually do this at the same time as trying to get in on   *
 *    any of the other options and, potentially, also at the same time as  *
 *    the other options once she gets into one of the other options.       *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  The prioritizer probably needs to formulate a few basic plans for      *
 *  getting Alley out of her rut in the road to ruin.  It presented three  *
 *  that fit with the idea of getting a legal, above board, fairly stable  *
 *  job at some point, but only after spending some time on short term     *

 *  tasks.                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  First, she could get a crappy job nobody else wants in an area with    *
 *  better jobs for people who have better qualifications than her, so     *
 *  that she would barely make more than the time and money costs          *
 *  involved in getting to and from work and doing the job, or just        *
 *  working as a gig economy delivery job.  The major downside seemed to   *
 *  be heavy wear and tear on her already ancient hybrid.  The upside was  *
 *  getting some entry level experience, either in an office or doing      *
 *  delivery work, while she paid her bills with income from               *
 *  participation in the study.                                            *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Second, she could get a remote job working for the sort of company     *
 *  that hires desperate people who learn quickly, giving them on the job  *
 *  training in technical skills that could be used in future career       *
 *  development.  The upsides were obvious, but the downsides included     *
 *  the fact these companies were often involved in doing something that   *
 *  could expose them to lawsuits or even criminal investigations, though  *
 *  the entry level employees themselves should be mostly insulated from   *
 *  that.  Most of these companies hired overseas, though, and getting a   *
 *  job like that would be a minor miracle, to say nothing of the fact     *
 *  Alley thought she would probably find the work morally objectionable.  *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Third, she could apply for financial assistance at a professional      *
 *  trade school with a job placement program while she lived on the       *
 *  study participation money.  The downside was crushing debt it would    *
 *  take decades to pay off, and no guarantee the job placement services   *
 *  would actually put her on a career track instead of just getting her   *


 *  a short term job that would evaporate.                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  None of these really excited her, and the prioritizer promised to      *
 *  develop more strategies while she tried to find something acceptable   *
 *  that fit with those options.  It also offered a fourth choice, which   *
 *  she could start immediately and keep doing while pursuing one of       *
 *  those tracks.  It would not help her advance toward career goals, and  *
 *  it involved some financial risk to get started, but the prioritizer    *
 *  seemed to have decided it would offer easy money.                      *

 *                                                                         *
 *  The prioritizer urged her to start looking at online private party     *
 *  transaction sites for ways to buy and sell things based on price       *
 *  arbitrage.                                                             *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */



They found some "want to buy" ads on Craiglist - Like - Thing.  Alley went around to thrift shops looking for things to sell to those people, then contacted those for whom she found relevant used products.  She confirmed a selling price higher than the thrift shop price and willingness to pay cash, bought the items, and headed out to meet people.  Several hours and a few transactions later, she had /* more than a */ several hundred dollars in her pocket, even after subtracting enough to cover what she paid for the items.



/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Is this where this should happen?  Perhaps I should cut it out,        *
 *  considering it seems a little redundant with the problems that put     *
 *  her car in an auto shop later.  I think this is redundant, now.  It's  *

 *  not good foreshadowing.                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She headed to a mechanic's shop and paid to have her car checked       *
 *  over.  While she waited, she looked at more ads, and the prioritizer   *

 *  suggested some transactions she could use to profit some more.         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  When the mechanic was done going over the vehicle, he told her the     *
 *  bad news.  Her car was going to need a new engine soon.  There were    *
 *  smaller changes that could be made to extend its life, but that would  *


 *  just put off the cost of getting a new engine.  As it was, she could   *
 *  probably get by for another six to eight months.                       *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

The prioritizer informed her it was rebooting for an update.  She got in the car and drove home, putting off any more transactions until the next day.

Halfway home the glasses filled with text, obscuring the road in front of her.  She pulled them off and hastily tossed them onto the passenger seat to clear her vision.  She calmed down and finished the drive home.  Once inside and sitting on her couch, she donned the prioritizer glasses, and they activated with the word "ONLINE" briefly flashing at her.

Text appeared: "I apologize for the reboot surprise."

................................................................................

"If I have misidentified the relative importance of your goals, please let me know so I can recalculate prioritization."

"No, that works for me.  Thanks."

"Good.  We should start by looking at cryptocurrency prices."

Two more hours of research determined the best bet for a target cryptocurrency seemed to be Stater, the standard currency of the Lydian digital account settlement network.  She set up a wallet for it through her laptop, over an anonymizing relay routing system, and wrote down some payment address codes.  For the sake of keeping some information safe from digital snooping, a pocket notebook and pen became an obvious addition to the short list of things she would carry with her every day.  At the prioritizer's suggestion, she made sure she was not wearing the glasses while dealing with setting these things up so that it would not have access to information that could be used against her, such as by seizing control of her Stater assets once she had them.

Another half hour of searching found someone willing to sell Stater for US dollars anywhere in the Inland Empire.  She sent a message via encrypted application on her laptop to ask about buying a small amount of Stater, and received a response almost immediately.  It succinctly suggested a meeting place in a police station parking lot.

She stared at the message.  "Is making this kind of exchange near a police station a good idea?"

The prioritizer said "You should research this."

Another fifteen minutes satisfied them both.  It seemed like a way to protect someone exchanging larger sums of cash or physical goods from thieves.  The nature of the exchange could be easily obscured from exterior police station cameras while providing significant deterrence to acts of violence.



Alley prepared everything for the meeting, then found herself with a few hours to kill.  She realized she hadn't eaten dinner, and decided that was a good start to using up that time.  She read a book, researched privacy technologies more, and took a nap.  Other than sleeping, nothing she did fully took her mind off the fact she was about to do something that felt a little dangerous, even though everything she knew about the situation suggested this was no more dangerous than driving to Irvine and back during high traffic periods.  That went double for the interchange between the 91 and 215 highways.

Twenty minutes after she locked her front door, she came around a corner and saw the police station ahead.  Lamp posts created widely separated islands of light in the parking lot.  One end was heavily populated with a variety of civilian vehicles, most of them huddled together to fill almost every parking space within a couple parking space rows of the building.  Beyond that, the lot was almost entirely empty.  She made a point of using her turn signal early before she pulled into the police station parking lot, passed by a clear view of the glass fronted lobby, and drove into the distant, dark outlands where painted lines were more weathered and less recently repainted.

She backed her car up to the asphalt berm curb dividing pavement from weedy neighboring lot, nose aimed back the way she'd come in.  She checked her car's touchscreen and saw it indicated she faced south by southwest; she was in the closest thing the lot had to a northwest corner, as she and the person she would meet had agreed.  /* Maybe that agreement should be worked into earlier narrative at some point, instead of mentioned in the past tense here. */

She turned off the car and opened the door for a little air circulation.  At this time of night, the air smelled pretty clear, and she let the coolness of the breeze soothe her stress.

The prioritizer's impersonal voice spoke in her ear.  "You are early."

Alley nodded.

"This is probably a good thing.  It gives you a chance to notice if something suspicious occurs before your scheduled meeting time."

She straightened up a bit, banishing her moment of relaxation away.  "Right.  I should be careful about this."

"Are you prepared?"

Alley looked at the vaguely discernible biodegradable shopping bag sitting in the dark floorboards of the front passenger seat, checked the tiny pepper spray canister in her front pocket for the fourth time, and made sure the parking brake wasn't engaged.  "Yeah, I think so."

She waited, thinking about the fact she was sitting alone in a police parking lot, and hoped nobody would come out to ask her questions she didn't know how to answer.

She waited, thinking about the fact she was too far away from the police station doors for someone to get to her before a strong attacker could kill her, overpower her and stuff her in the trunk, or just grab her bag of money from her, and still get a head start on any police pursuit.

She waited, watching the way her breath under her mask failed to fog her glasses despite the way the air cooled the lenses, a sign of quality her old glasses did not exhibit.

................................................................................

When she was ready, she decided she had enough time to satisfy her curiosity.  She looked up the eminent domain case, and in a few minutes she learned that the county just shifted its eminent domain claim to someone else's property.  A few more minutes of searching revealed that the second property owner could not afford a lawyer for an extended court battle, and ended up having to accept the county's offer, which bought the person's late parents' home.  The second property owner ended up having to move into a weekly rental motel.

That was not the happy ending Alley wanted.

She headed out the door, mentally gnawing on the injustice of it all.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  rewrite the above to use a park bench for the meeting, as indicated    *
 *  below, instead                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

Alley had to check her compass again to be sure which park bench was north of the boarded up snack stand.  It turned out to be the only bench with someone sitting on it.  She glanced back toward her car in the tiny parking lot, one of only two cars there.  The other was a black late model Audi with a person in the front seat.  The windows were so darkly tinted she suspected they were illegal, so she had no idea who was sitting in the driver's seat.

As she approached the bench, she saw that a pale young red haired woman sat there in a tight green t shirt, tiny shorts, heavy black boots, a black mask, and black gloves.  Some kind of cheap synthetic drawstring bag rested on the bench beside her, and she had something like a tactical purse on her other side.  She wasn't what Alley expected in an anonymous gun parts trade.

The redhead watched steadily as Alley approached, with what turned out to be vivid green eyes.  The lack of freckles might mean she was not a natural redhead, but it also might just mean she got them removed.

................................................................................

The prioritizer told her "It is getting close to time for you to leave for your next meeting."

She checked the time and realized she was hungry.  She grabbed everything she needed, and grabbed a hat to help obscure her appearance a bit for surveillance cameras.  She bought fries and a shake at a drive through on the way, and when she finished the fries she donned her gloves at a stoplight, remembering Carmen once more and how the redhead wore gloves during the entire meeting.  /* Why is this here?  ---  I don't know why I have those dashes here. */

Once she got to the correct neighborhood for the meeting, Alley drove around the block once, then decided she should just park in the supermarket parking lot, off to the side near the alley behind the store.  Soon, she stood near the back corner of the building, masked, gloved, and hatted.  Her glasses informed her she was seven minutes early for the meeting.

She patted the reassuring bulges of the pepper spray, now in her left front pocket instead of the right, and the extending baton, in her right rear pocket.  She slung the bag of handgun frames over her shoulder by the drawstring and headed back around the corner.

Alley immediately saw a broad shouldered figure standing with an umbrella over his head, just past a steel faced employee fire escape door.  The umbrella he held in his right hand shaded most of him from the sunlight above, but as she approached the figure's features became clearer.

He was a well muscled black man, in his fifties or sixties from the look of it.  He wore neither mask nor glasses.  Around what looked like a permanent dour turn of his mouth she saw greying and close cut, but not exactly groomed, mustache and beard.    On his head she noted a black beret with some kind of unit patch on the front.  The whole beret, including the patch, looked scrupulously clean, though it appeared positively ancient.  It was worn threadbare in places, and seemed to have lost the stiffness necessary to maintain its previous sharp military shape.

The man waited and watched impassively as she approached, and she felt increasingly nervous as she got closer.  The impression of the man's solidity increased with closer proximity.  She stopped about ten feet away.  After a moment, she said "Hi."

................................................................................

The prioritizer said "I am reconsidering options, in light of new risk assessment prioritization.  This may take a few minutes."

Alley looked at the envelope of cash, then pulled out the bills and counted them again.  They added up as she expected, but the prioritizer said "Please count them again."

"What?  Why?"

"While you counted, one of them appeared to be thicker than standard United States federal reserve notes, and also appeared to be very new.  Perhaps some of these notes is a counterfeit.  Please count again while I watch."

Alley frowned at the stack, and started counting again.  Toward the end, she hesitated on one of the few new looking bills in the stack, with a feeling like something was wrong.

"That is the note whose thickness appears to be incorrect."

Alley pulled it out of the stack and looked closer.  It felt stiffer than most bills, but that could just be due to it being new.  She rubbed it to get a feel for its surface, and it separated into two bills.  "Oh, shit," she said.  "That scary war veteran guy accidentally gave me an extra hundred.  Fuck.  What if it wasn't an accident?  Maybe it's a test."

................................................................................

"How is that dishonest?"

Alley's lips tightened for a moment.  "I guess dishonest isn't the right word, but I'm taking advantage of him in some way that doesn't feel right.  For all I know, that hundred might end up being the difference between something bad hitting him hard at some point and not hitting him at all."

"Do you feel you owe him that consideration, personally?"











"No, I guess not," she said.  "It's not like I ripped him off, or lied to him, or even pretended I didn't notice.  I really thought it was the right amount of money, and even if he hasn't really done anything to me, he did scare the crap out of me a little."

"We should discuss new plans for tomorrow, then.  I have a proposal for you to consider, if you are ready."





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Ideas:                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley should be prompted to buy from and (or) sell to other study      *
 *  participants in ways that help her as the middleman in a deal the      *
 *  others could have handled directly for greater benefit.  She should    *
 *  also be prompted to do some internet research work for some other      *
 *  study participants as a way to make a little money, though the         *
 *  prioritizer should warn her this is a short term method of advancing   *
 *  her finances that will not likely be fruitful for long.                *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Some hot guy should be part of the story, younger than Alley, and an   *
 *  ally of hers in some way.  This may be one part of an apparent         *
 *  potential love triangle with Alley and her ex.  The guy should turn    *
 *  out to be gay, or perhaps bisexual but in a committed relationship     *
 *  with a man at least, and thus not truly available at all.  The ex, of  *
 *  course, while potentially interested in getting back together with     *
 *  her, should neither be a lovesick sap nor be what Alley decides she    *

 *  wants.                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Up to the point where she turns him down, Alley should probably seem   *
 *  potentially interested in getting back together with Dalton, perhaps   *
 *  -- at least from his perspective.  Should she seem that way to the     *
 *  reader?  Should she seem that way to herself?  However that works      *
 *  out, though, she needs to ultimately have to tell him that he is not   *
 *  actually what she wants now, and in addition -- but not as the         *
 *  underlying reason for the foregoing, of course; just as a separate     *
 *  fact -- she needs to walk away from him to follow her new path at the  *
 *  end, especially without dragging him into it because it's not the      *




 *  best place for him.                                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  More Ideas:                                                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Should the apparent love interest new guy who has a boyfriend (or is   *
 *  maybe just gay) be a fellow study participant?  Should he be part of   *
 *  her cyberpunk crew in the shadowrun?  Should he be a Second Realm      *
 *  hacker?  If the last of those three: Should he be her primary guide,   *
 *  or perhaps some other character who starts off on the sidelines?       *
 *  Should his boyfriend be someone she assumes is just a friend?  This    *
 *  last might be especially appropriate if I go with the mercenary or     *


 *  activist shadowrun cyberpunk character idea.                           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  How does she end up in the Second Realm?  Does Dalton actually know    *
 *  how to get in touch with the Smuggler analogue?  Does Dalton have the  *
 *  trust, sway, and (or) influence to get the Smuggler guy to do a favor  *
 *  for him (namely, helping Alley out)?                                   *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Does the old black war veteran Army Ranger guy introduce her to the    *


 *  Second Realmers?                                                       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  I think when they pick her up (because I think she should be picked    *
 *  up, unless she's just transported there by someone under more direct   *
 *  circumstances), she should be transported with a bag over her head or  *
 *  something like that.  They at first aren't going to be especially      *
 *  trusting of some new person they never met before getting a clear      *
 *  look at the way they got to their Temporary Autonomous Zone.           *

 *                                                                         *
 *  I need to figure out some ideas for what will be used to provide fast  *
 *  internet access for the Temporary Autonomous Zone.  A few stacks of    *
 *  shipping containers in a dusty industrial shipping container storage   *
 *  yard (possibly with a concrete slab under them, I guess) does not      *
 *  seem likely to provide very easy access to high speed mainstream       *
 *  "above the waterline" or "above board" internet access.                *

 *                                                                         *
 *  What name will I give to the Smuggler inspired guy?  Will I refer to   *
 *  the actual Smuggler in a historical context?  It feels like I          *
 *  probably should, if for no other reason than giving credit to          *

 *  Smuggler where it's due.                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  How does Alley's path shift after priority updates due to the risk     *
 *  tolerance profile change?  How will she meet the black war veteran     *
 *  and Carmen plus Cliff again later?  I kinda feel like she should.      *
 *  Maybe she should meet the girl from the first kid's car, too, but      *
 *  probably not the kid himself again.                                    *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Maybe the black war veteran former Army Ranger tough guy shows up      *
 *  again as a service provider, with her as a customer, when later she    *
 *  needs to be transported surreptitiously and clandestinely from one     *
 *  place to another, equivalent to what's going on with similar           *
 *  scenarios in other stories out there.  This could be a good way to     *
 *  get him back into the story and in contact with her.  She could also,  *
 *  then, end up having the opportunity to pay him back the hundred        *
 *  dollars he doesn't even realize she owes him.                          *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Perhaps something Alley could do for one of the other study            *
 *  participants is do research on people who are trying to find a         *
 *  particular issue of a particular comic book series to complete a       *
 *  collection, because maybe this other study participant is in need of   *
 *  money and has a comic book in excellent condition that could bring in  *
 *  some money like that.  Should Alley end up charging the guy then,      *
 *  when the guy talks to the potential buyer, the deal falls through,     *
 *  leaving the guy with no money to speak of, and in fact with less than  *
 *  when he started because he had to pay Alley?  Will this be a case      *
 *  where Alley pays the guy back, because even if she did the work she    *
 *  realizes the guy is in financial trouble and needs the money, and      *
 *  part of the reason he's in such financial trouble is that the          *
 *  research he paid her to perform -- though effective and well           *
 *  completed for him -- did not actually bear fruit for him?  Is there    *
 *  some possibility this will turn out to be bad for one or both of them  *
 *  if it gets back to the professor and his spooky spook government       *
 *  intelligence contractors that the prioritizer is cross pollinating a   *
 *  bit between study participants that should be kept separate from each  *


 *  other?                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Will Alley end up running a courier job on a motorcycle?  That seems   *

 *  fun.                                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Will Alley have to bail some guy out of jail?  Perhaps a criminal of   *
 *  some kind, wanted by the police, has the money to bail out a co        *
 *  conspirator needs someone else to go in to pay the bail -- someone     *
 *  who is not wanted by the police, and thus can get away with it.  That  *
 *  would be fun.  The question is really how I should arrange for her to  *
 *  do this *before* she ends up on the lam, because afterward she's       *
 *  probably a bit afraid to go into a police station.  Perhaps the        *
 *  criminal paying for things has some half crippled old lady (or         *
 *  perhaps the half crippled old lady *is* the criminal!) talk her into   *
 *  paying the bail for her poor grandson or whatever the hell he is.      *
 *  That could be extra fun, of course.  Now I just need an excuse for     *
 *  Alley to have to pay the bail under her own name instead of            *
 *  delivering payment for the half crippled old lady or something like    *
 *  that.  Hell, maybe she (the old lady) pretends she is afraid of being  *
 *  on camera because the government is full of horrible people who will   *
 *  do bad things with the video, or to her, or whatever.  Maybe she's     *
 *  afraid of being sent to a nursing home that is almost prisonlike in    *
 *  how it runs things, according to the old lady's sob story.             *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Maybe the lawyer of some crime boss is just arranging for her to       *
 *  carry the payment down there and drop off the bail as a courier, thus  *
 *  the motorcycle courier job.  That seems like the most likely scenario  *
 *  so far, but very far from the most fun.  If she does it with a         *
 *  motorcycle, though, that means she's doing it after she's on the lam,  *
 *  I think, which means I have to figure out how to get her to be         *
 *  willing to go to the place to pay bail.  That might be a bit harder.   *
 *  If she's just acting as a courier, though, she might just be           *
 *  overlooked pretty much entirely as unimportant, and thus not really    *
 *  at any risk of being identified unless her face gets on camera.  Then  *
 *  again, her face getting on camera is very likely.  Perhaps the mask    *
 *  situation is going to help here.  I just need to figure out how to     *



 *  handle this.                                                           *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

"Yeah, I think I'm ready."

"I have two broad approaches to describe.  Each offers different benefits than the other.  First, you could look into the Deliv advertisements asking for courier drivers.  Second, you could seek quality assurance work for an overseas product review automation business.  Either can begin producing income immediately and give you work experience that may help when applying for another job later."

"I guess you're asking whether I'd rather be a professional driver or work in the software industry."

................................................................................

By evening, she was done for the day, and needed to relax.  She idly skimmed through Open Marrakesh, looking for tools there, hoping to profit from cryptocurrency prices to buy the tools she could resell for dollars.  She had little success, and gave up on it until morning.

---

/* Saturday */

Alley cooked a mushroom and cheddar omelette for her breakfast.  She was halfway through it when a sharp sound from her phone indicated an incoming message.  She checked it, and saw that it was from the professor.

"Good morning, Alethea," it read.  "Logs of your activities dropped off a couple days ago.  We aren't getting enough data to sustain the study.  Are you using the prioritizer?"

Through the ear stud in her ear, the prioritizer spoke to her.  "Perhaps full audio log redaction provides too little information for the study."

"Shit.  I can't afford to pay back the first study payment, and I still haven't really gotten anywhere with long term income plans."

................................................................................

She managed to carry out three deliveries without trouble during the day.  After dinner, she opened the application one more time and saw another request that nobody else had accepted.  The pick up location was only a five minute drive away, and it promised another delivery coming back so she could get paid for both legs of the trip.  It was a scheduled pick up time, three hours away, which also meant she would probably get a slightly higher rate for making deliveries after dark.

She accepted the job and looked up the route.  She would have to drive all the way to Huntington Beach -- and back, of course.  Annoying, she thought, but maybe lucrative.

On her way out, she brought her extending baton, along with all her usual pocket fillers.  She had forgotten all about it that day, but now she thought about how dangerous a place the world could be just beneath the relative safety of the surface activity she saw most of the time.  She was not playing the part of the middle man for a gun parts deal in an alley, but that danger could still unexpectedly surface at any time.

She started the car and pulled away from the curb.  As she drove, she realized Cliff in the Audi was probably aiming a rifle at her while she talked to Carmen about sales tactics.  Alley shivered as a chill raced up her spine.

Alley found herself slowly driving down a dark residential street with most of the overhead streetlamps broken out.  She took in the sight of dilapidated old houses that all looked like trashed repo sales.  When she pulled up at the address on the courier request, a painfully thin, shirtless and barefooted man approached, wiry and pale with greasy hair and so little body fat she almost imagined she could see individual muscle fibers through the skin.  He held a box in his hands, protectively, and it looked a bit overenthusiastically taped shut.

"Be careful," the prioritizer advised her.

"Yeah."  She rolled down the window, keeping her right hand near her hip so she could grab her baton if she needed it.  The window hesitated a couple times, and she began to fear she would have to open the door to take the package, but it finally came down enough.

................................................................................

"Don't worry," he said.  "I don't bite."

"Yeah, okay," she said.  "I guess this package is for you, then."

He shrugged.  "Not exactly.  Come on in."  He stepped aside, giving her room to pass by.

Alley hesitated.  The living room ahead of her was scrupulously clean and neat, apart from a large red silicone tray on the coffee table with tools and electrical parts on it.  She stepped slowly inside, over the darkly stained wooden furniture that looked over a century old -- armchairs, couch, table, and book cases full of books, every piece of furniture looking like it was meant to go with all the rest of them.  Even the lamps on end tables seemed part of the same set.

On the tops of the packed full book cases, overflow books stood between bronze bookends.

Her gaze settled on the man again, who closed the door and said "Have a seat.  Do you want a drink?"

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  PICK ONE:                                                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  In the soft light of lamps under linen shades, he was starting to      *
 *  look less like a hardened killer running guns and more like a tough    *
 *  but kind grandfather.                                                  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  In the soft light of lamps under linen shades, he was starting to      *
 *  look like a tough but kind grandfather rather than the trained,        *
 *  hardened killer she first took him to be.                              *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

She nodded, then passed by the end table at one end of the couch and sat in an armchair, still holding the box.

"I have some bottled water, Coke, milk -- white or chocolate . . . and tea.  I'd offer a beer, but I guess you have a long drive ahead of you and won't have time to recover from the high alcohol brews I keep around here."

Alley felt her dry lips with her tongue.  "Ah . . . yeah, I guess I'm thirsty.  A Coke would be good."

................................................................................

She glanced back a couple times, and saw him keeping watch.  He only stepped inside and closed the door when she was almost at the end of his block.

When she merged onto the highway, she wondered what he thought she meant by "clients".  He hadn't even asked what kind of clients she had.  Maybe, she thought, he believed she was talking about something related to Deliv, or when she sold him handgun frames.  None of that really rang true, though.

She worried at it for a bit, then found her mind wandering and lost track of the thought.











---

/* Sunday */

She woke in the morning to the sound of her doorbell, quickly followed by hard rapping on her door.  She groaned and looked at the clock.  It indicated the time was just after eight thirty.  "What the fuck his this?" she asked the air.

The doorbell and knocking began again.  "Impatient, I guess."  She pulled on her pants from the previous evening and made sure she had her baton and pepper spray in her pockets.
................................................................................

They all stared at each other.

"Can I help you?" Alley asked, her voice tired, but sharp.

The woman said "You have a little hole in your shirt, there."

Alley looked where the woman pointed, and saw a hole in her Information Society shirt over the right side of her abdomen.  The hole had been there since before her uncle gave her this shirt as a kid.

She looked back at the woman.  "Yeah," she said.  "I sleep in this thing.  Strangers don't usually get to see it."

Neither of them had the decency to look chagrined at that, but the man looked a bit disappointed about something.  Perhaps he was hoping to be more intimidating, and maybe he failed because he was distracted by the shirt.  He was certainly looking at it, like it was significant somehow.

The man spoke first, this time.  "Are you Alethea Lucas?"

................................................................................

She hit the button to lock the door, then sat on the couch and plucked her phone from the charging plate.  A message notification blinked at her.

Alley donned the prioritizer's glasses and checked her messages.  One had arrived from the professor over an hour earlier.  It told her to give the glasses to the men who would come to see her that morning with government IDs.

She looked at the door, and muttered ". . . men?"  She wondered if the professor expected different people, but this was clearly close enough.  Maybe he just meant Men In Black.



The prioritizer placed text in her field of view.  "There does not appear to be much choice in how you handle this," it said.

"Yeah, no kidding."  Alley looked at the door a moment longer, and said "There's something familiar about that guy."  She shrugged, returned to the door, and opened it once more.

The pair outside broke off in mid discussion and looked at Alley.

"Here," she said.  She pulled off the glasses and handed them to the closest of them, the man.
................................................................................

"Perhaps you should change your laptop configuration if you are concerned about government contractors becoming aware of your activities while researching them."

Alley sat back, then got up and headed to the kitchen.  "What do you think I should do to start?"

"Begin with research on OpenBSD," the prioritizer said.  "Search for information on protecting your privacy.  Information about security benefits of different operating systems suggests that OpenBSD may have the best foundation for privacy characteristics among well known projects, though default configuration may not be ideal."



As she listened, Alley pulled her last pressure cooked egg out of the fridge and peeled it.  "Yeah, okay.  That sounds good."

OpenBSD led to offshoots, other projects that forked the OpenBSD project itself or built different takes on user environments or common server types on top of it.  Projects that often got compared to OpenBSD came up, and she looked into those as well, but most of them led down blind alleys about experimental security hardened OSes of various forms that were not very suitable for her purposes.

One option, QueBSD, was based on OpenBSD and promised clean separation between pseudonymous online presences -- avoiding being tracked as a person by confusing tracking technologies into trying to track many different entities that they never correlated as a single person.  She eventually realized its approach to separating environments was just OpenBSD a cut down OpenBSD system with some extra interfaces around OpenBSD's own virtual machine management tools.  To make much use of it would involve installing other OSes on top of QueBSD in virtual machines.

Another option, Minix, seemed good for security and privacy based on some comments in a few mailing lists and forum discussions, but after digging in further she realized that most of what people said about its privacy benefits looked like either things that could be done on many other OSes, including OpenBSD, and things that were just people misunderstanding Minix reliability benefits.  It did not seem to be a particularly privacy oriented option.
................................................................................

"What do you mean?" the prioritizer asked.

"It seems like one of the best things about OpenBSD is the code audits.  I didn't even find out about how thoroughly they check out their code for problems until I got to the 'Why Maxim OS?' page, where it links to pages about the audits on it and on OpenBSD.  With that much auditing, it seems like the obvious choice for keeping governments and corporations from slipping something into the software that would undermine privacy."

"I do not know why the OpenBSD project would not present that information more prominently.  MaximOS appears to be an excellent choice for your purposes, though.  It may be a good choice for security your phone as well."

"Yeah," Alley said, "I saw that info about the mobile tech version of MaximOS."

"The devices sold by the company that develops MaximOS may be a good choice as well."

"Sure, if I could afford to buy one."

She sat and thought, idly clicking through pages on the MaximOS site.  She stopped on the main page and read the slogan at the top out loud:

................................................................................

"A cardinal system is like using a system of one to five stars to assign value to a product when you rate it on the e commerce site where you ordered it.  An ordinal system is like deciding between the two products in the first place, because it only tracks which options you value more than others, not some static numeric set of value levels."

"What if I value them both the same?" Alley asked.

"That seems such an unlikely case that it can be dismissed immediately.  Even from one second to the next, values may change, so fluctuations would settle into a condition of differing ordinal values for any two items.  In addition, no two products are truly identical, though the shopper may not have enough information to know which that person would choose if fully informed."



"What about when I just can't decide between two options, and I can't get both of them?  Isn't that proof of being able to value two things equally?"

"If you cannot choose between them based on your own knowledge about the products, and they are substitutes or equivalents rather than complementary or orthogonal to each other, you will likely either keep seeking more information or decide the difference is not worth effort to identify.  In the latter case, you would likely choose the product that is, at that exact moment, the easiest to order.  Thus, one becomes a higher priority than the other, not because of a quality particular to the thing, but a quality of your circumstances.  It receives a greater ordinal value position based on momentary convenience.  In short, convenience and elimination of the stress of decision paralysis becomes the deciding factor as a value greater than the difference between discernible product values."

"What if I put off buying something I want more to get something I want less, to get the second thing more quickly?"

"This is another case of a third value coming into play, such as buying the lesser value item when you need it and postponing the greater value item because it is not as quickly important to acquire.  This is also an example of my main purpose, prioritization strategy.  Lower value goals should not prevent achievement of higher value goals, but when they serve as facilitators for the higher value goals they should be pursued first to ensure greater success later for the higher value goals."
................................................................................

"Fuck.  If you turn out to be what they want, you'll probably make them even more effective at screwing people over in large numbers so they can get bigger Christmas bonuses."

"That is a possibility," the prioritizer said.

Alley grabbed a box of adhesive bandages from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and sat on the couch to wrap one around her fingernail.  She opened her laptop and looked at the discussion on the darknet site.  "Okay," she said, "maybe I can do this."

The process of installing MaximOS turned out to be easier and faster than she expected.  Organized documentation led her through the setup process after installation for the kind of computing environment she wanted.  It included suggestions for different user needs and short, clear explanations for why each choice existed.  It helped her get to a point where the system was more than adequately locked down for Alley's needs, in her own estimation.  The prioritizer concurred.

She quickly found that MaximOS gave her tools for quickly creating user profiles in the OpenBSD native "prison" lightweight container system, kind of a more thoroughly sandboxed reimagining of the FreeBSD "jail" system, so that to any network connected computer each of these profiles looked like completely different systems, and she could switch between prison "cells" -- the name it used for configured user profile environments -- with a simple keyboard shortcut.

She played around with this for a little while, getting used to how it worked in practice, then wiped all the practice profiles in an instant.  She created a new profile and opened its cell.  Within it, she used anonymized routing to visit the website for COIN Corp and looked around.  Finding nothing very useful that way, she opened other cells with different profiles and started searching for references to COIN Corp on employment related professional social networking sites.  On those sites, she started finding the accounts of COIN Corp employees.

Corporate officers, accountants, system administrators, and policy agents -- whatever those were -- all appeared in her searches.  She checked the company website again, looking at the employment listings, and found one for policy agents.  It spoke of interfacing with the public, performing information field research, and collaborating with local and federal law enforcement among the job's responsibilities.  More importantly, perhaps, it included a smiling model in a black suit with a white shirt broken into vertical bars by thin stripes of dark red.

Her searches focused on policy agents after that.  She launched a custom program -- which she had to copy over from her home backup brick -- she paid someone to to write for her in the days of her greatest success as a freelance internet researcher.  The program took a series of API endpoint addresses -- web URLs, addresses that provided formatted data intended for other programs to read, rather than providing human readable webpages -- and searched them for data records that matched search criteria she typed into the search parameters window.  Among the criteria were those API endpoints, a list of employment resources on the internet that she had used for searches on behalf of clients before.

She knew the program would take a while to collect its results. In an ideal world, it could be done with the long list of API endpoints she gave it in a couple minutes.  In the real world, her program had to space out requests to avoid getting blocked by the target sites as abusing bandwidth, and it could take anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours.  She decided to take a break for a snack, then she went for a walk as she waited for the program.

The event of the last few days played out in her mind as she walked.  It was more like a jumble of nonlinearly connected bits and pieces, ordered more by emotional significance than any chronological flashback montage.  As she approached her front door again she dwelled on the question of what George's friend, or client, or whatever, was doing with all those handgun frames.  She had no idea how to make that fit with George's charitable custom prosthetic fabrication for a little girl.  Sure, he said the girl's father would receive the guns, but that said nothing about how anyone would actually use those guns after they got delivered.  What would they use the guns to accomplish -- or to destroy?

In theory, she supported the right to keep and bear arms, even if the federal government had gotten the Supreme Court to offer such broad exceptions to the Second Amendment and loose definitions of a "state of emergency" that the Second Amendment itself was nearly toothless.  Her support for the idea of the right to keep and bear arms, however, was not the same as thinking it was a good idea for some kinds of people to have guns.  She suspected that if someone was buying illegally assembled firearms by the bagful they probably did not intend to put those guns to a good, ethical purpose.  Even psychopathic mob hitmen could have young, disabled daughters, after all.

She stood with her hand on the doorknob of her front door, lost in thought, worried about what she had helped facilitate by the act of purchasing those printed handgun frames to resell them to George.  Did she want to ask him about them?  She wasn't sure whether that was a great idea, either.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  It feels very much like this moment should turn into some kind of      *
 *  encounter here, with someone snapping Alley out of her reverie by      *
 *  saying something like "Hey, Alley.  Did you get lost at your own       *
 *  front door?" Some kind of scene must commence at that point, of        *
 *  course, in which Alley is shown to know people who like her and        *
 *  consider her a friend.  Perhaps some revelations for the readers (via  *
 *  conversation about shared background knowledge) would come out in      *
 *  such a scene.  After completing this encounter, Alley would return to  *

 *  her tasks.                                                             *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Describe Alley finding information on one of the two agents,           *
 *  specifically the male, who turns out to wear the name Cole Brewer.     *
 *  Cole Brewer will turn out to be an old Army veteran buddy of her late  *
 *  uncle's.  Insert some earlier reference to something familiar about    *
 *  the agent, so that now she can realize why he seemed familiar.  She    *
 *  should remember him being a very good friend of her uncle's, and I     *
 *  should figure out whether she liked him back in the day or thought     *
 *  there was something creepy about him, or what.  She should be          *
 *  surprised that Cole is now working in a job like this, given his       *
 *  connection to her anti authoritarian uncle who went off grid and       *
 *  ultimately died in some kind of raid by federal agents or              *
 *  investigators on his property which was, quite decidedly, not up to    *


 *  code.                                                                  *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

"Jesus," she said again /* because she will probably have said "Jesus" fairly recently by this point */.  "I just can't believe he ended up working for these guys."

"Perhaps he was sent here because of your prior acquaintance.  That might be part of their tactical approach to dealing with you, in an attempt to induce you to be more compliant."

"Maybe.  It's weird he acted like he didn't know me, though.  If nothing else, he should have recognized my name."

................................................................................

"If that is the case, creating the impression that you would be an ideal candidate for COIN Corp to recruit may be even more important as a means of ensuring you have some time and opportunity to find an acceptable solution to your present predicament."

"Yeah."  She frowned.  "He was so much like my uncle, so set against things like a surveillance state society and authoritarian rule, that it's kind of inconceivable that this is what he would be doing now.  It doesn't make any sense.  How could he just become everything he hated like this?  My uncle must be getting pretty restless in his grave over this."

"Perhaps he was not quite the person you believed him to be."

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  "It's like Pascal's wager in reverse, I guess.  Instead of trying out  *
 *  living like a Christian for a while and growing to believe it, you're  *
 *  forced into living like a Christian then giving yourself the excuse    *
 *  to start believing in it after you're used to it." <- This is a        *
 *  terrible description of the idea of Pascal's wager "in reverse", and   *
 *  desperately needs rewriting.                                           *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

She sat, silently thinking.  "I guess it's like Dalton would say: that giving people a reason to act differently, and an excuse to think of how they're acting as good instead of evil, you can make people accept whatever they thought of as evil as, somehow, good now.  If it's a way to get people to justify themselves, they might just completely reverse their beliefs about good and evil without even realizing it.  It's like Pascal's wager in reverse, because the target doesn't get asked to try out acting a particular way to see if it becomes a habit first, and a belief system afterward.  Instead, the target gets seduced into acting in a particular way without realizing it, then gets introduced to excuses for why that's actually the moral thing to do, and the person latches onto those excuses as strong beliefs to avoid having to confront the idea they fell into immoral behavior that hurts people."

/* insert something about Getting George's telephone number */

George picked up on the third ring.  "Hello?"

"It's Alley, from last night."

"Oh!  Hi.  It's good to hear from you.  Did everything go okay last night with that delivery?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Good.  So . . . why did you call?"

She hesitated a moment before saying "I wanted to ask you about your work, or at least the stuff I've seen."

"Are you talking about the prosthetic arm, or about the other stuff?"

"The other stuff."

................................................................................

"Well, by the time you could get out here, if you're still back in San Bernardino County, I'd be ready to talk to you, or I could come to you, if you want to meet closer to home.  That's assuming you want to meet right away, this evening."

"Yeah, tonight's good."

"Do you want to see if you can get a Deliv job out this way to make it worth your while?"

"Sure, that sounds like a great idea.  I'll send a text when I know how it's going to go."



"Good.  I'll see you then."

"See you."

After dropping off six boxes of books at a used bookstore in Newport Beach, she headed north into Huntington Beach and made her way to the curb in front of George's house again.  By the time she reached his door, he had already opened it for her.  He must have been watching for her arrival.

................................................................................

He nodded.  "Dalton [ Schaeffer - Hearst ]."

"Yeah."  She looked at him, wary.

"I guess I can see why you don't want to bring that up much.  He's a controversial figure."



"Yeah, he is.  There isn't really anyone I can talk to about him.  Either people hate me because I got engaged to him, or they hate me for leaving him."

"I could see that," George said.  "I won't hate you for either reason."

"Thanks," she said.  "That's good to hear."

"I'll just be completely straightforward with you about what I think about him, and you can decide whether you want anything more to do with me.  I won't hold it against you, whatever you decide, but I guess it wouldn't matter if you didn't want to be around me any longer anyway."
................................................................................

She nodded.  "That sounds good."

"It'll give us a few more minutes to hang out without talking about anything so serious before you go home and think the hard thoughts about what you're going to do."  He got up and started toward the kitchen.

"Thanks."

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  George really needs to be less ignorant of the possible dangers of     *
 *  Alley's AR glasses.  He knows this technology exists.  He's not just   *
 *  going to blithely go on talking about a bunch of insane stuff without  *
 *  noticing there's some danger of it getting out because of the          *
 *  technology people carry around with them.                              *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  This might be where George provides some backup for Alley as she       *
 *  picks up a Deliv job, or something like that.                          *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

Alley looked at the cover of the first book George had given her.  She wrinkled her nose at the no frills cover, a cheaply made trade paperback binding with only a black border and black text on a stark white background.  It had the look of some vanity press thing, where nobody had even bothered to really design the cover at all.

She read the full cover to herself.

"An Agorist Primer

................................................................................

The pages were numbered, starting with 1.  The first chapter began on a page numbered 4.

She closed the book again and read the cover once more.

"Maybe Sam Konkin is a friend of his," she said, meaning a friend of George's.



She looked at the first page again, and the number one.  Books never started with a page number of one.  She flipped to the end, and saw that the last page showed the number 50, on the last page of the book's index.  At least it had an index, but that meant however many pages of index it had could be subtracted from the already minuscule length of the book's content.

The prioritizer said "This is a very short book."

"Yeah," Alley said.  She ran her fingers down the disintegrating spine, held together by off white cloth tape.  Someone had written on the tape with a black marker:

"An Agorist Primer, by SEK3"
................................................................................

"Uh, yeah, sure," she said.

"Thank you."

She shrugged and opened the book.  Apparently, a computer program wanted to read the book, too.  /* It must seem like a good place to get prioritization strategy or judge her desired goals, or something like that. */  "Do you think this is going to be a good place to get prioritization strategies, or judge my desired goals and how to prioritize them, or something like that?"

"It is possible," the prioritizer said.  "Its author proclaims it to be a guide to strategy, and effective strategy must account for prioritization."

"Yeah, okay," she said, and opened the book again.  The introduction began:

"Agorism can be defined simply: it is thought and action consistent with freedom.  The moment one deals with 'thinking', 'acting', 'consistency', and especially 'freedom', things get more and more complex."

It went on to assert a sort of scientific basis, a connection to the idea of libertarianism "consistently and without the practical contradiction", and an inherent practicality of its own that elevated it above theoretical ideologies that were not useful in "real life".

................................................................................

The book continued.  "Reality is our standard.  Nature is our lawgiver."

Her skepticism fortified itself, but she continued reading, determined to give the book an honest, fair chance to convince her of something.

As she got further into the book, Alley found herself absorbed.  She stopped to think about passages when she read them, flipped back to reread previous pages, and opened her laptop to start taking notes when she could not help herself.  It was fascinating.

It took her much longer to read than she expected.  Hours had passed, by the time she finished.  It had made explicit a manner of approaching the world, and made the acts prescribed by the book feel not simply justified and pragmatic, but also obvious in retrospect.

She wrote fragmentary essays as a way to explore her thoughts on the subject.  It excited her, and ignited the fires of her imagination.  She realized she had practiced agorism already.

The book utterly lacked any suggestions for how to get started in a concrete, pragmatic manner, though, which she found disappointing.  She had herself halfway engaged in agorism for years, by choosing her career path as an independent internet researcher who helped her clients penetrate the barriers of search bubbles and poorly mediated online experiences.

Recently, she had more fully practiced agorism without realizing it by doing something as simple as buying a bag of 3D printed handgun frames from one person and selling them to another.  Thus, in the last few days, she had more directly engaged in agorism.  If not for the prioritizer, though, she realized reading the book and wanting to do what it said would have just left her feeling adrift, without a sense of how to get started.

This felt good, and she thought about the fact she could do more of the same.  She could have an idealistic life and a pragmatic life at the same time, without conflict between the two aspects.  In a way, the prioritizer study was what had made this plan, and this realization, possible.

She then began to think about why she was not already doing exactly that.  First, she found her livelihood as an independent internet researcher evaporating from under her feet like the surface ice of a frozen lake directly sublimating into vapor as she stood on it; she was no longer able to use that as the foundation for a safe and enjoyable life.  She had, at times, blamed her failing independent internet researcher business on the fallout from Dalton's changing political opinions and his own infamy being reflected onto her.  The popular hatred for Dalton in some circles induced her to hide from the public, which hurt her visibility to potential clients.  When she considered the facts, however, she always realized the real problem was that the world was moving on.  Her work was becoming irrelevant.

Nobody cared enough about getting all the information about anything any longer, except for certain people who could afford to have their own pet research assistants or otherwise get what they needed in - house without having to hire an independent researcher like her.

Her more recent, her more fully agoristic actions were dangerous, and thus possibly worse than merely irrelevant and doomed.  Despite being technically legal, they were exactly the kinds of activities COIN Corp would use to hang her anyway.

Despite all the promise of living a pure, good, and free life, all the assurance of practicality beyond what most ideological theories could hope to provide, it turned out the whole idea was -- at least for her -- not only pretty impractical, but wholly unpracticable.

The book, short and mostly to the point, was enticing in what it promised, and George seemed like a perfect example of how its advice might actually be good, a great success story.  She realized it was definitely not for everyone, though.  More directly and specifically, it was not for her.

The excitement it injected into her refused to fully fade.  She got ready for bed, slid under the covers, and tossed about for a long time in the dark.  Unable to sleep, she rose again, picked up the other book, and sat on the couch in her fading old Information Society shirt to read.

This book contained very little theory, and a whole lot of practice -- essentially the opposite of the previous book, in that regard.  It explained how to prepare the minimum gear needed to run out the door in an emergency and still survive without anything else to start.  It gave advice in being invisible to surveillance and pursuers sometimes, temporarily identifiable to them other times, and simply absent the rest of the time.  It offered solutions to the problem of being cornered or caught.  It directed the reader to information about acquiring or creating the resources one does not already possess.

In short, it gave a lot of good advice for staying out of the grasp of people who might mean the reader harm, possibly including a government, its agents, and its allies.

She made notes while reading this book, too, but she also skimmed parts of it where she had not skimmed the other book.  This time, though, the notes included concrete actions she could take in the morning.

................................................................................

She also kept an eye out for trades she could make on the side, moving things between Open Marrakesh and normal online classified ad deals.  She stayed away from some of the more lucrative deals she could have made involving Open Marrakesh, though, because they were too close to the edge of the law.  Some of them stepped all the way over the line to overt illegality, and she made sure to avoid going anywhere near any of those.

The cargo area in Alley's hybrid hatchback had always seemed bigger on the inside than the outside, the vehicle's best feature in her opinion.  She made good use of it that day.  A surprisingly complete collection of emergency gear got tightly packed into a layer in the cargo area with a tarp over it all.  She even included all of her old motorcycle riding gear in that layer of stuff, on a whim.

She thought the motorcycle riding gear could be useful to have as some kind of protective gear in some emergency scenarios, and it also freed up some room in her coat closet.  She had not ridden a motorcycle in a couple years, and it was just taking up space.  The only part of her protective riding gear that did not make the cut was her helmet, which would not have fit as neatly and securely as everything else she packed into the vehicle.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  I should insert something about buying Stater with her cache of cash   *
 *  before getting to the part about buying tools.  She needs the          *
 *  cryptocurrency for those deals.                                        *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

By the end of the day, she was exhausted.  She managed to buy more Stater cryptocurrency, complete six Deliv jobs, almost complete her bugout vehicle kit, and buy a bunch of top brand hand tools at good prices from Open Marrakesh without depleting her Stater total much.  She noticed hand tools from the right brands were always in high demand on the online classified ad sites.  She decided to see how many of those tools she would be able to sell off the next day.

She felt exhausted but accomplished by the end of the day, and she realized a lot of what she did would not have been possible in such a short time for her to accomplish so quickly /* that's redundant */ without the aid of the prioritizer ensuring she did not miss opportunities and planned her day's activities such that performing some of the earlier tasks made it easier to perform others later.  As she pulled up in front of the house, she laid her head back against the headrest of her seat and thought about the sudden significance of the professor's study in her life.

"I really feel like maybe things are going to be alright for me," she told the prioritizer.  "Professor Goulet really came up with something good, I think."

................................................................................

"Although the probability of the risk is uncertain at this stage, the severity is still high, and there are reasons to believe the probability may be higher than would be wise to ignore.  Are you certain you do not wish to make clear plans to remove yourself as a possible stationary target?"

"Yes, I'm sure.  It's ridiculous.  It'll never happen."

/* Tuesday */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley needs to do some things here.  It will probably involve some     *
 *  courier work, possibly including that thing where she drops off bail   *

 *  for someone.                                                           *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley does some more courier work.  She does some more currency        *
 *  arbitrage work.  She might need to drop off bail for someone in all    *
 *  of this stuff.                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */



/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  At some point, she should set up a meeting for an exchange in a        *
 *  private conference room at a co working space.  Someone should         *
 *  recognize her and ask whether she's meeting a client, to which she     *
 *  replies vaguely in a positively interpretable fashion without          *
 *  literally confirming that assumption with her words.                   *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  I wanted the person who greets her to say something that raises some   *
 *  factoid of her life, but I'm not sure any longer what I had in mind.   *

 *  Did it have anything to do with getting out of Dalton's shadow?        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Does the person she's meeting recognize her connection to Dalton?      *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  After an announcement by the Federal Reserve, she follows the          *
 *  prioritizer's advice to put a bunch of her extra United States         *
 *  dollars in cash into Stater.  After a moment more of discussion, she   *
 *  puts some of her bank account into VaporCash, known as a good place    *
 *  to put money if you can't hide the source but want to hide where it    *
 *  goes, just because the news suggests that there will be a bonanza in   *
 *  general cryptocurrency investment, which means it's a good time to     *
 *  trade cash for cryptocurrencies -- and, if you're going to move money  *
 *  from United States dollars fiat currency via a trackable channel into  *
 *  a cryptocurrency just to benefit from currency movements it might be   *
 *  a good idea to hide your tracks so you can keep your money from being  *
 *  tracked along the way, and claim whatever you like in an emergency     *
 *  about where the money might have gone.                                 *

 *                                                                         *
 *  During all this, the prioritizer has Alley make some deals with other  *
 *  prioritizer study participants, though she may not know they're        *
 *  dealing with fellow study participants.                                *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  ## Crossing The Threshold:                                             *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley has a dream about her home being raided, and herself getting     *
 *  getting questioned at length about there being too much cash in her    *
 *  home.  She is ultimately released, but the money is gone, taken under  *

 *  "civil forfeiture" laws.  She shakes it off as a weird dream.          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  In the morning, she resists what she sees as "dangerous" activities    *
 *  and instead just tries to get work.  She feels she has enough money    *
 *  to get by at this point, but will have to figure out how to actually   *

 *  use it without getting in trouble for tax evasion or something like    *
 *  that, reading her dream as her subconscious just worrying about the    *
 *  long term implications of having money of dubious origins.             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She gets a message from Zeke telling her that she is going to have to  *

 *  pay the damages and, when she asks what damages he means, Zeke sends   *
 *  her video of her home being raided by armed men in tactical gear,      *
 *  with the two agentlike people that had visited and questioned her      *
 *  earlier supervising the raid.  She recognizes the bag they carry out,  *
 *  which contained her stash of dubious origin cash.  She has a near      *
 *  panic attack, but (with some calm aid from the prioritizer) informs    *
 *  Zeke she'll head home right away.  The prioritizer then discusses      *
 *  options with her, and urges her to stall.  She tells Zeke something    *
 *  came up and she'll be later than expected -- "work stuff" -- and may   *
 *  not even make it back until the next day.  She then Faraday bags her   *
 *  phone and makes a deal on Craigslist (or something like it).  She      *
 *  sells her car for cryptocurrency, sells some cryptocurrency for cash,  *
 *  and buys a motorcycle.                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Somewhere in the midst of this, she does some research on the people   *

 *  raiding her place, and this helps her decide to go along with the      *
 *  stalling and vehicle swapping.  She arranges a place to stay for the   *
 *  night via some barter ish resources, and she works on ideas for how    *
 *  to get out of whatever is going on.  The prioritizer convinces her     *
 *  she needs more help, from someone with resources and connections.      *
 *  Ultimately, this leads to contacting Dalton and hiding from anyone     *
 *  watching her home.  Technically, she is not targeted by law            *
 *  enforcement, and has no responsibility to report, and California law   *
 *  is unlikely to side with Zeke over nonpayment of damages caused by a   *
 *  corporate home invader.                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  None of this means she's safe from that corporation, though.  The      *
 *  Technocrat would totally find a way to make her disappear if so        *
 *  desired.  How does this get conveyed?  There must be some information  *

 *  about the person and/or the corporation to give this impression.       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Does she learn that the Technocrat was involved in the disappearance   *
 *  of her uncle at this point?  If so, this could become the first pinch  *
 *  point.                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  One day, while out running errands, disaster strikes.  Her car has     *
 *  mechanical trouble, and she has to go spend some money at an auto      *
 *  repair shop.  While there, Alley gets a message from George.  The      *
 *  message is about his home being "burned", and him having to drop off   *
 *  the grid.  He tells her to run, if she hasn't already been caught,     *
 *  and says he'll try to get in touch with her very soon, using a         *
 *  different way to contact her because he was going to ditch all his     *
 *  old contact methods, but that she should run and hide and maybe find   *
 *  herself an ally who can and will help her.                             *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */



"It looks like I should turn here," Alley said, checking the map /* on her augmented reality heads up display */ shown in the HUD on her glasses, and rolled up to a stop at an intersection.

"Continue ahead," the prioritizer said.  "It is better to avoid police checkpoints."

Alley hesitated as the light turned green, then drove on.  "Okay, yeah.  That makes sense."  As they passed the intersection, she looked to her right, and saw half a dozen police officers in black around the barricade half a block away.  They wore helmets and bulky body armor, each of them armed with some kind of long arm -- rifles, shotguns, or a third option /* something */ she did not recognize.

"How am I getting there if I don't go through a checkpoint?" Alley asked.  "The drop off is in the hot zone."



/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Here, the prioritizer tells Alley what they'll do to get past the      *
 *  barricade perimeter.  It probably ties in with some kind of means      *
 *  smugglers use to run the blockades, though how the prioritizer knows   *
 *  about it is beyond me at this point.  Perhaps the prioritizer simply   *
 *  reasons that there are people who are prepared to smuggle people and   *
 *  objects across blockades in urban hot zones, and that there must be a  *
 *  way to contact them even if you have never done so before and don't    *
 *  know how to get in touch with those smugglers.  Alley might look up    *
 *  something with her Axiom via anonymized distributed networks.  At      *
 *  this point, she might also contact George for help getting in touch    *
 *  with a smuggler, though, instead of getting someone online.  In fact,  *
 *  doing so might be what led to George getting raided, and her as well.  *
 *  It could be that the raid was planned for shortly after when she       *
 *  would have arrived at home, and only the fact her car broke down       *
 *  saved her from that fate.  I could also ensure that, actually, the     *
 *  prioritizer manipulated Alley by arranging for the car to break down   *
 *  somehow, knowing (somehow) that Alley was in significant danger of     *
 *  being raided at that time.  This is kind of a big decision, though.    *
 *  Should that be how it happened, or should it actually just be luck?    *
 *  Such luck often feels wrong, improbable, in stories.  I just need      *
 *  good explanations for the plotting to work out in a way that readers   *


 *  might find plausible and right.                                        *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

"Just ask for Smuggler," George said.

---

Alley donned her motorcycle jacket, stuffed her gloves in the jacket pockets, /* and */ strapped on her low profile pack, and locked her car.  She looked at the front of the house, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly.  She walked up to the front door and pressed the old fashioned doorbell on a house that looked like it had been built in the 1970s.  It looked like it might not have been maintained since the 1980s.