n2020  Check-in [c9d603dba1]

One of them wasn't even wearing a mask.  She wondered if affect analysis would designate it a genuine smile on his face.

The masked man in the middle motioned her to a chair on her side of the table without saying a word.  She took her seat on the hard, smooth plastic, facing a triumvirate sitting in judgement.  Beneath her mask, Alley relaxed her smile just enough to draw breath to speak, but the buzz-cut woman to Alley's right leaned forward.  Alley renewed her careful smile and held her words.

"So," the woman began, "what was it like, being the 'side dish'?"

Alley's eyes flicked from her 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.

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

"Every day, I regret signing up for ANTAS Jobs a little more," she told her phone.  She had never turned on the ANTAS voice integration, so it offered no response.

She skimmed the message about the study.  Parts of it identified it as some kind of personal assistant software instead of prescription drug trials.  She scrolled back up to the top and began reading more closely.

Alley read about goal management guidance and new paradigms in assistive technology, typically vague language about new software.  She hesitated, then sent a response to a university account on ANTAS Jobs.

The response came less than ten minutes later, and offered three possible appointment times the next day.  She chose one.

She was committed to it, now.  She was tired.

She took a nap, and slept through her reminder alarm.

---

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

/*

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 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 hundred dollars is only reduced to thirty 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.

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

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 hundred dollars in her pocket, even after subtracting enough to cover what she paid for the items.  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 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, she donned the prioritizer glasses, and they activated with the word "ONLINE" briefly flashing at her.

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

She grabbed her keyboard and typed "Who is that?"

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

"Overall, logs of your behavior and interactions will intrue less on your privacy than if you keep settings as they are now."

She waited for a YES/NO button pair to appear in her vision, but eventually just typed "Okay."

More text appeared.  "Logging routines have been altered for your preferences.  You may activate all sensors using your phone.

"I recommend you use a handsfree audio hearpiece to ensure less opportunity for outside surveillance picking up my audio output."

She popped an in-ear stud out of the back of her phone and tapped it into place in her ear.

A calm, smooth, androgynous voice spoke in her ear.  "Do you mear me?"

She reached for the keyboard, but the voice spoke again.  "Try speaking aloud."

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

"Here's the cash."  She hung her right thumb on her front pocket, then reached into the car with her left hand to pull out the bag.  She handed it to the boy.

He took it, keeping his eyes on her, and stepped back.  He tossed the bag into the car, then Alley heard some rustling sounds from the bag.  After a few moments, she realized whoever was sitting in the passenger seat had started counting.  Alley and the boy stood there, looking at each other, as they waited.  A girl's voice -- unless it was an even younger boy -- said "It's all here."

The boy tapped his device with his thumb once more, and said "Are we done?"

"Not yet," she said.  "Just wait.  Everyone waited.  A few seconds later, another alert chimed in Alley's ear.  "Okay, we're done."

"Good," he said, and sat back in his car with surprising quickness.

Alley sat down and hurriedly pulled her door shut.  The crossover backed out and quickly drove away, while she was still buckling her seatbelt.  Soon she, too, was on the road.

"It is too early to be sure that went well," the prioritizer said.

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

"It should."

She drove home in silence, occasionally looking at the empty space in front of the passenger seat that used to hold a bag full of cash.

When she got home, she sat in front of her laptop, set aside her glasses again, and checked her Stater account.  Everything was where it was supposed to be, as far as she could tell.  After closing that window, she donned her glasses again and started looking for large differences in price for items available in both local pseudonymous classifieds and OpenMarrakesh, which was one of half a dozen of the worlds supporting in-person meetings in the extended OpenBazaar online market universe.

She found an improbable opportunity, one that did not exist the last time she checked a few hours before.  Someone on OpenMarrakesh was selling printed polymer frames for a specific CZ-branded handgun, and someone on a classified ad site wanted to buy three of them.  The frames on OpenMarrakesh would cost most of the Stater she had, but it looked like she'd get get just under twice as much for the frames paid back in dollars.  She checked mentally subtracted what she would pay for the frames, and noticed she had enough to buy a multiple-cryptocurrency trader like the boy used earlier with what was left.

"Should I make this deal?" she asked the air.

The prioritizer answered.  "This looks like a very good deal, the best you have found."

"Yeah," she said.  "Fine."  She did a little research before going any further, and found out that the parts she planned to buy and sell were not even considered significant for firearms regulation purposes, as long as they did not include things like firing pins, hammers, strikers, barrels, or chambers.  Double-checking showed her none of that was included in the frames.  She sent a reply to the classified ad, then got ready for bed.  She had no reply yet when she was done, so she turned in.

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

"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 twenty.  Fuck.  What if it wasn't an accident?  Maybe it's a test."

"That seems extremely unlikely," the prioritizer said.

"Yeah."  She sighed.  "I guess you're right, actually."

"I have a plan of action to propose for tomorrow."

Alley started to nod, then looked at the extra twenty in her hand.  "Wait.  I should give this bill back to that guy."

"For a high priority aversion to high severity risks, this is not a good choice.  You should avoid meeting with people with a high potential for violence."

Alley laughed quietly.  "Yeah," she said, "you're right.  I got through one meeting without trouble with him already.  Should I count that as my lucky break, and forget about him, or take it as evidence that I might not be in any danger if I meet him again to give back his misplaced money?

"It doesn't feel right, just keeping his money, though."

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

"Did you realize there might be more money than he intended to give you when you counted the first time?"

"No."

"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 twenty 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."

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

    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 twenty dollars he doesn't even realize she owes him.

    Perhaps something Alley could do for one of the other study participants is
    do reasearch 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,
................................................................................
    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.

*/



















































































































/*

















































































Maybe Alley could go to a doctor to get a prescription for something that she can then sell to others as a way to make money.  This is obviously illegal.  It should probably only come up after she ends up on the run because of the people coming to her home and thus scaring her off.

Maybe Alley could just carry drugs for someone.  Again, this is pretty sketchy, and is probably not appropriate right now.

*/

/*

One of them wasn't even wearing a mask.  She wondered if affect analysis would designate it a genuine smile on his face.

The masked man in the middle motioned her to a chair on her side of the table without saying a word.  She took her seat on the hard, smooth plastic, facing a triumvirate sitting in judgement.  Beneath her mask, Alley relaxed her smile just enough to draw breath to speak, but the buzz-cut woman to Alley's right leaned forward.  Alley renewed her careful smile and held her words.

"So," the woman began, "what was it like, being the 'side dish'?"

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.

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

"Every day, I regret signing up for ANTAS Jobs a little more," she told her phone.  She had never turned on the ANTAS voice integration, so it offered no response.

She skimmed the message about the study.  Parts of it identified it as some kind of personal assistant software instead of prescription drug trials.  She scrolled back up to the top and began reading more closely.

Alley read about goal management guidance and new paradigms in assistive technology, typically vague language about new software.  She hesitated, then sent a response to a university account on ANTAS Jobs.

The response came less than ten minutes later, and offered two possible appointment times the next day.  She chose one.

She was committed to it, now.  She was tired.

She took a nap, and slept through her reminder alarm.

---

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

/*

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.

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

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.  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, she donned the prioritizer glasses, and they activated with the word "ONLINE" briefly flashing at her.

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

She grabbed her keyboard and typed "Who is that?"

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

"Overall, logs of your behavior and interactions will intrue less on your privacy than if you keep settings as they are now."

She waited for a YES/NO button pair to appear in her vision, but eventually just typed "Okay."

More text appeared.  "Logging routines have been altered for your preferences.  You may activate all sensors using your phone.

"I recommend you use a handsfree audio earpiece to ensure less opportunity for outside surveillance picking up my audio output."

She popped an in-ear stud out of the back of her phone and tapped it into place in her ear.

A calm, smooth, androgynous voice spoke in her ear.  "Do you mear me?"

She reached for the keyboard, but the voice spoke again.  "Try speaking aloud."

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

"Here's the cash."  She hung her right thumb on her front pocket, then reached into the car with her left hand to pull out the bag.  She handed it to the boy.

He took it, keeping his eyes on her, and stepped back.  He tossed the bag into the car, then Alley heard some rustling sounds from the bag.  After a few moments, she realized whoever was sitting in the passenger seat had started counting.  Alley and the boy stood there, looking at each other, as they waited.  A girl's voice -- unless it was an even younger boy -- said "It's all here."

The boy tapped his device with his thumb once more, and said "Are we done?"

"Not yet," she said.  "Just wait."  Everyone waited.  A few seconds later, another alert chimed in Alley's ear.  "Okay, we're done."

"Good," he said, and sat back in his car with surprising quickness.

Alley sat down and hurriedly pulled her door shut.  The crossover backed out and quickly drove away, while she was still buckling her seatbelt.  Soon she, too, was on the road.

"It is too early to be sure that went well," the prioritizer said.

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

"It should."

She drove home in silence, occasionally looking at the empty space in front of the passenger seat that used to hold a bag full of cash.

When she got home, she sat in front of her laptop, set aside her glasses again, and checked her Stater account.  Everything was where it was supposed to be, as far as she could tell.  After closing that window, she donned her glasses again and started looking for large differences in price for items available in both local pseudonymous classifieds and OpenMarrakesh, which was one of half a dozen of the worlds supporting in-person meetings in the extended OpenBazaar online market universe.

She found an improbable opportunity, one that did not exist the last time she checked a few hours before.  Someone on OpenMarrakesh was selling printed polymer frames for a specific CZ-branded handgun, and someone on a classified ad site wanted to buy eight of them.  The frames on OpenMarrakesh would cost most of the Stater she had, but it looked like she'd get get just under twice as much for the frames paid back in dollars.  She checked mentally subtracted what she would pay for the frames, and noticed she had enough to buy a multiple-cryptocurrency trader like the boy used earlier with what was left.

"Should I make this deal?" she asked the air.

The prioritizer answered.  "This looks like a very good deal, the best you have found."

"Yeah," she said.  "Fine."  She did a little research before going any further, and found out that the parts she planned to buy and sell were not even considered significant for firearms regulation purposes, as long as they did not include things like firing pins, hammers, strikers, barrels, or chambers.  Double-checking showed her none of that was included in the frames.  She sent a reply to the classified ad, then got ready for bed.  She had no reply yet when she was done, so she turned in.

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

"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."

"That seems extremely unlikely," the prioritizer said.

"Yeah."  She sighed.  "I guess you're right, actually."

"I have a plan of action to propose for tomorrow."

Alley started to nod, then looked at the extra hundred in her hand.  "Wait.  I should give this bill back to that guy."

"For a high priority aversion to high severity risks, this is not a good choice.  You should avoid meeting with people with a high potential for violence."

Alley laughed quietly.  "Yeah," she said, "you're right.  I got through one meeting without trouble with him already.  Should I count that as my lucky break, and forget about him, or take it as evidence that I might not be in any danger if I meet him again to give back his misplaced money?

"It doesn't feel right, just keeping his money, though."

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

"Did you realize there might be more money than he intended to give you when you counted the first time?"

"No."

"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."

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

    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 reasearch 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,
................................................................................
    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."

"That consideration is an important implication of the choice.  Driving may give you greater employment autonomy, which seems consistent with your previous self employment choices.  Working remotely in software production and maintenance roles may give you greater flexibility in where you choose to live."

"Yeah," she said.  "I don't know about that QA job, though.  That's a really sketchy business, automating product reviews.  I'd become part of the problem with the internet.  I'm not sure I'd want to be a driver, but maybe it's worth trying."

"Between delivery engagements, you can also look for less risky trades to facilitate, much like before but with less proximity to people of questionable lifestyle legality."

Alley nodded.  "Yeah, that makes sense.  I guess I'll sign up with Delivr tomorrow."

"It is best to submit your application today, if you can, in case of delays."

She groaned softly.  "Fine.  I'll do it now."

Much to Alley's dismay, much of the next day consisted of Deliv registration tasks.  She had to navigate the government's process for requesting a driving record report to be sent to Deliv, which alone took more than two hours.  She also had to get a vehicle inspection appointment, which she almost missed because of the time it took to get the report.  After that, she needed to visit a Deliv office to pick up a decal pack for her windows, to identify her vehicle as officially attached to the Deliv service.

Between tasks, she looked at classified ads for possible trades to make that didn't look any more dangerous than buying a used socket wrench set.  Judging by what she saw in the classifieds, she could do well in the tool business, if only she could get her hands on enough socket wrench sets, at a good enough price to profit, to meet the demand.

By evening, she was done for the day, and needed to relax.  She idly skimmed through OpenMarrakesh, 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.

---

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."

"I will ensure some amount of additional logging occurs without significant privacy intrusion."

"Good.  Thanks."

"You are welcome."

She stared at her phone for a moment.  "What do I tell him, though?"

"You may say you were completing tasks that did not require my guidance."

Alley nodded, and typed out her message: "I was running errands all day yesterday.  It didn't seem like the prioritizer would be much help."

The response came quickly.  "Please take it everywhere.  It might be able to help with almost everything."

She typed "OK", then hesitated.  After a few breaths, thinking it over, she touched the send icon.

Once she finished eating her breakfast and cleaning her dishes, Alley opened her Deliv driver application and looked at courier requests.  She tapped one, got in her car, and started her first day on the job as a gig economy courier.

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.

"Ya know where ta take this.  Yeah?"  He spoke quickly, his words abrupt and staccato.  She wondered if he still had all his teeth behind his skull pattern mask.

"Yeah," she said.  "The address was in the app."

"Great.  Great."  He thrust the package at the open window.

Alley flinched away, then carefully took the box and set it on the floorboards in front of the passenger seat.

"Great," the man said again.  "Have fun!"  He stepped away, and waved.

She nodded and drove off.  She held down the button to raise the window as she want.  Her nose wrinkled at the lingering aroma of sweat mingling with some kind of acrid chemical.

"This doesn't feel much safer than doing deals for gun parts with scary old veterans in alleys."

The voice in her ear said "Perhaps we should consider other options."

"Yeah."  She nodded.  "Perhaps we should."

She drove up the onramp to I-215 and followed the highway up to the I-91 junction.  During a busier time of day, she would have taken an exit and used surface streets to avoid the Highway Junction of Death, but luckily the traffic density was pretty low at that time.

Through the chokepoint between Riverside County and Orange County, the darkness of night hid the scorched tree trunks to either side from view, but made the illuminated cross on the southern hilltop stand out all the more, all the lights on the religious idol shining in bright silhouette against the sky above.  The way it seemed to stand in judgement over the traffic beneath it made for an impressive, if slightly creepy and oppressive, sight.

The clean, pristine gated communities and manicured retail districts of Orange County soon slid slowly past, all signs of the Los Angeles semi-permanent riots of years past when they spilled over into Orange County long since having been erased by beautification projects.  The scenery then shifted again, becoming a more sordid, grimy, threadbare form of suburban decadence.  Bodegas and pawnshops shared walls with bail bond offices and all night mobile tech repair shops.  Gradually, the air changed subtly, becoming both cooler on her skin and more humid.

She found her exit, and drove through streets no narrower than in Perris but, somehow, they felt much more cramped nonetheless.  She passe by a pho shop and saw a number of people out front eating.  It looked like they might all be of Vietnamese descent, except for one single hispanic woman sitting at a sidewalk table with a small group.  She thought that might be a good place to eat, if she went when it was less busy, but it surely was not worth driving all the way back here from home just for lunch.

A few more turns led to a big house.  On a street full of unkempt lawns and ancient, peeling paint jobs, this big house -- two storeys with a three car garage and probably more than two thousand square feet in the living area -- was in beautiful, well maintained condition.  Its lawn and small flower garden were obviously tended with pride.

She picked up the box, exited the car, and walked up to the front door.  No doorbell presented itself, so she knocked, using a heavy brass knocker.

The door opened, and the older veteran who bought the gun frames stood before her, still wearing his beret.

"Hm."  He looked her over.  "That's a coincidence I didn't expect."

"Uh, yeah.  Me neither."  Her heart pounded, and she became acutely aware of how tough and hard his muscled arms looked where they emerged from the sleeves of a plain, faded, brown t-shirt.

"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 elctrical 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 endtable 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."

He smiled, just slightly.  "Alright.  Go ahead and put that on the table.  I'll be right back."  Without another look, he walked out of the room.

She looked at the books on the shelves.  Many were worn paperbacks.  Others looked like heavily used textbooks.  She leaned forward to set the box beside the silicone tray, then stood and approached a book case.

The texts included subjects like mechanical engineering, world history, industrial chemistry, economics and game theory, mathematics . . .

"Self-taught."

Alley started, her heart lurching into a rapid tempo again.  She turned to see that the man stood near her holding out a can of Coke.  "Here," he said.  "Sorry.  I didn't mean to startle you."

She nodded her thanks and took the can.  As he carried another can with him, he moved to the couch and sat down with a nearly inaudible grunt.  Alley followed suit, and resumed her place on the armchair.

"My name is George," he said, and opened his can.

"I'm Alley."

He swigged from his can.  "Nice to properly meet you."

"Yeah," she said.  She opened her can and drank.

George pulled something from a pocket and, with the sound of a metallic snap, a nearly four inch blade appeared in his hand.  She froze for a moment, but he only leaned forward to cut the tape on the box.

"Uh . . . I don'tneed to see whatever's in there."

He stopped moving and looked at her.  He looked back down at the box a moment, his brow furrowed.  After a moment more, his brow smoothed,and he smiled, the lines around his mouth and eyes deepening.  "Oh, I get it.  Hah!  Ol' Dave must've made quite an impression on you."

Alley looked away, unsure whether to feel embarrassed or just scared now.

"Look, I know Dave looks like he probably cooks meth for a living, but he just uses the shit.  He doesn't make it, and he's about as gentle as a daisy.  This box is just some parts I had him machine for me."

She looked ath teh box and shifted uncomfortably on her chair.

"Ah, right," he said.  "No, they aren't gun parts, either.  They're parts for a custom prosthetic arm I'm building for a little girl."

Alley sat back in her chair, relaxing slightly, and she sipped from her can.  After swallowing, she said "Really?"

"Yeah.  One of the guys getting the guns I put together with the frames I bought has this cute little daughter, nine years old.  She lost her arm above the elbow during the police crackdown on the protesters at the [ SOMETHING ] street massacre.  She's outgrowing the arm I made for her a year ago, already."

"Oh.  Right.  There's something about the guns."

He looked at her, sidelong.  "What about them?" he asked.

"Uh, after I got home, I realized you gave me too much money."

"What do you mean?  I paid what we agreed, and the frames were all good."

She shook her head.  "There were two brand new hundreds stuck together.  I got an extra hundred dollars by accident."

He stared at her.

"I, uh, don't have it with me," she said.  "Maybe I can come back tomorrow with it."

George laughed.  It was a warm, surprised, deep laugh, and she felt tension draining away again, despite herself.

"No, don't do that," he said, a hint of chuckle still in his voice.  "Y'know what?  I like you, Alley.  I even like the way your name describes where we first met."

Alley smiled.  "Thanks.  What about your hundred dollars, though?"

"Keep it.  I'll surive without it, and I don't think you'd drive all the way from Perris to Hunting Beach at gig courier rates if your finances were feeling really secure."  He winked at her.  "You're good people, Alley."

"Uh . . . thank you.  Maybe you are, too."

"Yeah, maybe.  I hope so."

/*

Maybe Alley could go to a doctor to get a prescription for something that she can then sell to others as a way to make money.  This is obviously illegal.  It should probably only come up after she ends up on the run because of the people coming to her home and thus scaring her off.  Then again . . . how does she get a prescription from a doctor if she's on the run?

Maybe Alley could just carry drugs for someone.  Again, this is pretty sketchy, and is probably not appropriate right now.

*/

/*