After resting long enough that Steve and Andrew could make it back home on their own, we flew back to the abandoned junkyard before going our separate ways. Or Steve did since Andrew lives in the same home I do.
But on the drive home, I got a call from Anivia, whom I had asked to only call/disturb me if it was really important. And if someone ever asked, I would say Anivia was my assistant/employee since telling them I had an AI was just a tad too soon.
"Hello." I said.
"Matt, don't talk on the phone while driving. That's dangerous." said Andrew.
"It's fine, but keep an eye out for the cops." I said to him causing him to shake his head at my request but still doing it anyways.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but it seems we may need to upgrade our servers sooner rather than later." she said.
"How many more users have joined?"
"150,000."
"That's pretty good."
"Indeed, sir, a two-fold increase in users in such a little time is very promising."
"But it means we need to upgrade our servers, hence the call."
"Yes, sir."
"Okay, I'll swing by and get some right now, but compile a list of office spaces/rental properties that meet the specifications for a decent-sized server room. At the rate users are signing up we'll need to keep upgrading and I don't have the room at the house for a full-blown server room. I want to board up the windows before the hurricane hits."
"Right away, sir."
"Also, look for anyone trying to offload servers. If we can get a lot of them for cheap, it'll be for the best."
"Yes, sir."
"Good, is that all?"
"You have also received some emails from various advertisement agencies asking about the in-app advertisements for Tinder along with offers, more interview requests, and some businesses asking about buying the app."
'Asking about buying my app already? That was a lot faster than I thought it would be, though with the explosive growth it's shown in just two days it makes sense. And the early bird gets the worm. Too bad for them.' I thought.
WOOP-WOOP
Looking in my rearview mirror, I could see a police car with red and blue lights flashing right behind me. Turning to look at Andrew, I saw him looking at me with an embarrassed look on his face.
"I think there's a cop behind us." he said.
"I can see that, Andrew, thank you." I said before pulling off to the side road, "Go through the advertisement agency offers and choose the best ones for me to review, don't respond to the interview requests, and turn down the offers for buying the app."
"Yes, sir."
"Good, bye." I said, hanging up the phone right as the police officer came up to my window while his partner was on Andrew's side.
"Roll down your window." said the mustached officer, to which I complied.
"Is there a problem officer?" I asked.
"You were talking on the phone while driving. You could've hurt someone with your distracted driving." he said.
"Sorry about that. Duty calls."
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"Right." he said, pulling out a ticket pad and writing on it before ripping it out to hand to me, "Here's your ticket. Hold off on your business 'till you're not driving, son."
"Will do." I said to him as he and his partner walked back to his cruiser while I rolled up my window and checked my ticket.
"Sorry, Matt." said Andrew.
"While I do wish you would have seen the cop and saved me a few hundred bucks, it's not that big of a deal so don't worry about it." I said, putting the ticket away.
"By the way, who were you talking to? It sounded like business."
"She was my employee/assistant."
"You have an employee already?" he asked, shock clearly written on his face.
"Sorta kinda." I said as I got back on the road.
"But you barely launched your app. How do you have an employee already?"
"I knew I would get busy when my app launched so I decided to get ahead of the curve before it was too late."
"Who is she? Someone from school?"
"No, someone I met online."
"Online? You sure you can trust her?"
"I can, don't worry. I did my due diligence."
"If you say so."
~
After dropping off Andrew at the house, I made my way to the same store where I bought the first server, a local electronics store that had an owner who knew a thing or two, according to the online reviews.
The electronics store was located in a less savory neighborhood so it had burglar bars all over the windows and entrance and you had to wait to be buzzed in.
BUZZ CLANK
Opening the now-unlocked door, I walked into the store and was met with a room full of electronics and electronic parts from all sorts of devices. And behind a burglar bar covered bulletproof window cubby, the owner, a tall, lanky, balding middle-aged man, was looking at me warily.
"It's you again." said the owner.
"Need some more servers." I said, getting right to the point.
"That server you bought last time should be able to meet any normal demands." he said.
"Normally, yes." I said with a smile while he stared at me before relenting.
"What kind and how many?"
"Do you have anything better than the last one I bought?"
"Pfft, of course, I do." he said, looking almost offended that I would even ask such a question.
"Better but not that much more expensive."
"Then no."
"Thought so. How much more?"
"Next one up is going to run you $500 more."
'Don't have much liquid cash on me right now. Wish I would've done some more jobs or sold some of the gold.' I thought before coming up with an idea.
"How about a trade?" I asked.
"No. Cash only."
"Gold."
"No, ca-" he said before stopping midway, registering what I had said, "Gold?"
"Gold."
"H-how many troy ounces?"
"How many for a whole server rack of your best servers? Today." I asked.
"Mmm." he said, taking out a calculator and punching in some numbers, "75."
'75 troy ounces. That's 3/16 of a gold bar. Considering I have 147 million troy ounces of gold, it's no sweat off my back.
But it'll have to be the last time I come here. Don't want him to get any ideas and call up some friends to try to rob me the next time I walk into the store. Not that he could, it would just be a pain in the ass to deal with. At least he doesn't have any footage of me being here, thank you watch.'
"Deal."
"R-really? Ahem, I mean okay. I'll get the stuff ready. Give me 15 minutes."
"Okay." I said, walking out of the store and to my car.
Walking up to my trunk, I looked around to make sure no one was watching before opening it up and reaching inside like I was looking through a bag when in reality I just pulled a gold bar out of my inventory.
I eyeballed the bar and mentally marked a quarter of the bar before using the watch's Laser Cutter function to cut off 1/4 of the bar. Using Observe on the cut-off piece, I saw it was a little less than a 1/4 so I cut off just enough for it to be 76 troy ounces. And considering it would be too much of a hassle to cut off that one troy ounce, I decided to leave it as is.
Putting the rest of the gold bar back in my inventory and the transaction piece in my jacket pocket, I closed the trunk while looking around to make sure no one saw me.
Seeing I still had to wait 10 minutes, I sat in my car and used Radar to check what the owner was doing, only seeing him ready the servers. And that's all I saw for the next 10 minutes until the end when I saw him take out a gun and put it in his waistline.
'Sigh. I hope that's just for protection and he's not going to try to rob me.' I thought as I exited my car and entered the already unlocked store.
"Didn't think you were coming back." said the owner.
"A man of my word." I said.
"I hope so. Here's what you wanted. An entire server rack of my best servers. But first, let me see the gold."
"Here." I said, taking the gold out of my jacket pocket and turning it around for him to see.
"V-very nice." he said, gulping at seeing the pure gold, "But I need to see if it's fake."
"Go for it." I said, handing him the gold piece which was followed by him rubbing the gold on a black stone before dropping a few drops of acid on the marked stone, showing that the gold was real.
"O-okay. Pleasure doing business with you." he said, coming out of his cubby with the dolly of stuff and plopping it right in front of me before going back into his cubby.
"Is it all there?"
"I'm a man of my word." he said, no longer paying attention to me but rather fiddling with the gold.
"You better be." I said, moving the dolly but keeping my eye on him in case he tried anything, which he didn't.
Putting the stuff in the trunk of my car, I left the dolly in front of his store before getting in my car and driving off.