-----Chapter 3-----

Keung opened his storage locker at Stackables and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He reached up and turned on the light he had installed long ago. His work station was covered in circuit boards, wires, soldering flux, wax, screws, and bits of broken plastic and metal from about a dozen phone and computer casings. He set down the backpack and unloaded the cargo. Two cell phones, three laptops, and a pair of walkie talkies he found all at the e-waste center a few blocks from here. People love to think that their night drops are being left to be collected by the day staff, but most times the homeless or the poor but ambitious come along and just collect what is there that they can salvage or sell. Keung Chen was one such to a large degree.

Flipping a switch on his desk, an old TV he had mounted on a shelf clicked on and went to snow for a moment before turning to a blue screen as the television automatically covered up the annoying sound and picture. He powered up an old DVD player and popped in Firefly. The menu screen appeared a moment after and he maneuvered the menu panel on the front of the player to the “Play All” selection.

The theme song began and Keung sang along with a great big smile on his face as he got ready for his day of work. The workshop was brimming with gadgets and gizmos from all around the spectrum as well as two dozen others that were like nothing anyone had ever seen before, well, no one outside of Deogol and Keung that is.

There was meticulous shelving and tools that lined the wall of the ten by ten storage unit and upon those shelves were the boards, the wires, and gadgets that Keung has been utilizing for years, save for one or two shelves that had pieces of things piled up upon each other. That was what Keung was really doing here. He was not just some trash picker that liked to tinker, Keung has the mind of an electrical engineer working for NASA on some of the most advanced tech the world has ever seen, and he had to get materials where he could.

Keung was methodically opening the housing of each of the cellphones and pulling the boards, cameras, and batteries from them. One of these had a swollen back where the battery had spoiled, but that really didn’t matter to Keung. He didn’t need the battery, just about everything else on the other hand, he wanted those materials. Before the middle of the first episode Keung had gutted and inventoried both phones and their materials, and he had started on the first laptop when he heard the ringtone alert of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. He smiled and picked up the piecemeal cell to receive activating the loudspeaker.

Keung listened to the ringing of the call going through before the recipient picked up. The phone connected between the caller whoever they were calling, while Keung listened in on the unknowing party.

“Hello?” The first voice said.

“Hello. May I please speak to Mr. Chen?” Robert’s voice asked.

“Speaking. Who, may I ask, is calling?” Keung’s father replied.

“Hello Sir, my name is Officer Jenkins, I am calling from Oxnard, California. My office is attempting to get in contact with the parents of one Keung Chen, might you be the Kun Chen that is this boy’s father?” Robert asked.

“What is this about?” Kun asked, a harsh tone clear in his words.

“I am sorry sir, but this is a call with good and bad news. Sir. Your son is alive. He is living here in California.” Robert began, and he could hear a sudden sharp breath of tension leaving the man.

“I am sorry officer. I have been waiting for this call for many years, and I stopped believing that it would ever be good news.” Kun said, his voice cracking slightly as he continued.

“You said there was good and bad news. What is the bad news?” Kun asked as he finished.

“I am pestering the officer and he wants you to make me stop.” Keung said in a laugh the microphone on his telephone disabled so the other two men could not hear him.

“Sir. Your son has taken a strange interest in me personally. He and his friend have been playing elaborate pranks in the area and have been causing more than a little fuss. Since then, he has been leaving me taunting notes and has broken into my home.”

“And taken your DVDs, washed his clothes in your machine, and ate your food.” Keung said to the phone in mock outrage. “I have to be stopped!”

“I see. Have you detained him?” Kun asked in reply to the information, his voice now weak on the phone.

“No sir. You see, that is what I am trying to do. Bring him in safe, and return him to you. However, I have no direction to look. I have positively identified him, I have seen him in person several times, however thus far he has eluded any kind of capture,” Robert confesses. “Is there anything you can tell me to help bring him home safely to you? Does he have family here in California? A friend perhaps? Have you received any mail, emails, calls, anything like that from him?”

“No. No. No family in California. I am sorry, I am not familiar with any of my son’s friends. I am sorry officer. I don’t think I can be of much aid in this outside coming to see you myself and possibly finding my son in the places you have seen him. Perhaps…” He began but was cut off by Robert.

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“No. No sir. Please. You should stay home, focus on your life and trust that I will find your son and send him to you as soon as I can. There is no telling how long it will take, but sir. This is news. This is a lead on a missing child that has been gone for nearly a decade. Sir, this is rare. I don’t want to give you false hope that he will be home tomorrow and then have this take another month. I will find him and get him home to you sir,” Robert said after cutting the other man off.

“Well, Officer Jenkins, what can I do for you to help you recover my son?”

“Mr. Chen, could you send me some of his pictures, the most recent ones, pictures of you, your wife, any other children you may have had since. Anything that will remind your son of his past and renew his memory of that past?”

Keung’s face contorted slightly. He was confused with the move that Robert was making. “What are up to?” He asked.

“Of course. I could scan them in tonight and have them over to you in the morning. What is your email address?” Kun asked.

“Thank you sir. My email address is [email protected], no spaces, no dashes.”

“Spell that for me?”

Keung listened to the rest of the call but he was slightly distracted. He had not anticipated this, not all of it. He wanted Robert to know his name, he wanted him to look into his past. But, he didn’t want to drag his parents too far into this. He really didn’t think this all the way through. Not completely. He has made mistakes like this before and they have always caused him issues.

At least Robert was smart enough to tell his father not to fly out here, though there was always a chance he would do it anyway. Then again, what the officer said did make a little sense, Keung wouldn’t likely be found in places Robert already spotted him. Even if the boy planned to leave the officer alone from here on in, Robert doesn’t seem like the type that would give up easily. Not that he could, even if he wanted to.

No. Things are playing out in the way they have to for the optimal result. Keung may have to deal with his father, but that was just a minor inconvenience, dealing with Robert was the primary factor in this plan. He needed the other man, he would be another piece in the greater puzzle, Keung was sure. His father could be convinced to turn around and leave if Keung saw him in person. He’s done that before.

The Train Job began while Keung was deep in thought and it pulled him back out, he smiled thinking about when he first saw this episode of Firefly, back when it was aired on the fourth of July. Made no sense, releasing the second episode of a series first. What was wrong with them?

Keung went back to work disassembling the computers for parts and inventorying the new supplies on his shelves. It was something like working with sticks and rocks to make a jet plane to him… but he could do it, after so long using common technology to rebuild machines from home, he had become adept at the process.

Robert hung up the phone and thought about his next steps. He had the boy’s name, he knew what he looked like, and he would soon have links to the kid’s past in his possession.

Of course, that had to be the reason why Keung had left the print. He was following crumbs the boy put down for him, but following and taking the bait are very different things. You can turn a trap around on the hunter as long as you know the trap was set in the first place. Now, to figure out what the boy was baiting him toward.

Robert had made a trip to the hardware store and picked up a few new locks for his doors to ensure that Keung was unable to get back in. He had installed them before his call to Keung’s family and he was looking them over before he went out to see if he might spot the boy on a run around the block. Robert had taken the day off, he had more than enough sick time put aside so there was no problem taking a few days to see if he can get his hands on this kid by himself. If the station wouldn’t take this seriously, then he can put maximum effort into the investigation himself.

He closed up the door. The new biometric pad looked unusual, but not unattractive. It would take him some time to get used to it, but when it came down to it, it would be a lot harder to get into than his old key locks.

Keung hummed to a tune that was playing on his smartphone. He kicked his rolling chair from the desk and toward the wall. He came to rest beside a pegboard covered with hanging keys. He searched for the key to another locker in the compound. He left the room with the keys in hand, humming the tune and dancing slightly in step with the beat. As he opened the door to the other locker a dry cough of dust and dirt was lifted into the air. Keung was absently singing House of the Rising Sun by The Animals as he opened the door and hadn’t realized he was going to be inhaling years of settled dust when he distrubed the room, he hacked in the middle of “boy I know I’m one” and turned his face away as he allowed the dust to clear. Sneezing and coughing a few more times before walking in once the air cleared.

Once the air had settled Keung walked into the dust and silt caked room. Inside there were sheets covering various objects throughout. The covers protected everything under them from the dust that he just kicked up. It had been decades since this room had been opened, that was more than obvious, though to Keung it felt like yesterday.

He grabbed the broom beside the door and quickly swept up the room before pushing the contents out into the hallway. Once he was done, he pulled the sheets off carefully, in order to keep as much of whatever was left filling the air as possible, and then put each out into the hall and re-swept anything that remained on the floor into the hall before closing the door to shake out the sheets.

The hall was a huge mess of dust and dirt but the sheets were clean and so was the interior of the room. Walking in Keung flipped on the lights the old incandescent bulbs hummed to life and illuminating the machines within. Keung frowned slightly at each. These are outdated by over a decade easily.

When last they were being worked on brick-like flip phones were cutting edge, even QWERTY keyboard phones were years away. Today, they are almost considered as useful as bricks, so archaic. Microwaves, toasters, tabletop computers, and several elderly processor laptops all built into each of these towering devices were the top of the line at the time. Well, the top of the line that was easily acquired at the time without much fuss or attention drawn that is.

The young man pulled his notebook from his back pocket, plucked the pen from another pocket on his old flannel shirt, and began making notes for upgrades on each of the devices. His mind drifted to the last time he saw this room. Deogol had been with him that day. The old man had brought him here to reinstall. That was what he called it, he had told Keung that was how he had explained it to him.

Keung remembered his first encounter with the device. At the time he was angry, he was scared, and he was not taking the explanation well. He had been tied up and gagged. Then he was shoved unceremoniously into the huge glass tubed device. Once inside there, he was not getting out, wriggling and kicking as much as he could, even slamming his head into the glass. He had been a martial arts student for five years. His parents had insisted and there he was helpless.

The boy saw the old man moving, arthritically, through the workshop. Deagol needed to reference a notebook repeatedly before pressing nearly any button on the panels that were connected to the machine Keung had been entombed in. It was a horrifying five minutes as midi tuned keys sounded with each press that the old man made until the strange tube began charging energy to a very loud hum all around him.

There had been a sudden flash of light and Keung’s mind went white, his thoughts tumbled trying to find some grasp on reality. As the energy pulsated memories were unlocked. The pathways of his mind were bridging, each thought of Keung’s was being pressed further into the back of his mind as lifetimes of knowledge flooded through to the forefront. By the end of the session Keung was limp, every muscle in his body shuddered and tensed as his breathing found a natural rhythm once again.

Keung’s mind cleared of the flashback. He looked over the machines that he had once built and began to set up the notebooks and instructions someone would need to recall his consciousness if the need were to arise. It was always good to have a backup plan if needs be.