July 25, 2008
I jabbed at the buttons on the radio again, in the forlorn hope that this time....ah ha! It sounded vaguely like bad Salsa, but it was a lot better than nothing. As the ancient car vibrated its way down the road, it almost seemed as if the music was keeping time with the rattling...boom, chaka chaka...boom, chaka chaka....
Jane sighed as she turned over, somehow managing not to awaken herself. Quite a feat when she was over a foot longer that the space between the door and where she was resting her head my lap.
Looking down, I was almost overwhelmed by conflicting emotions as I remembered the first time I had seen my beloved daughter. I'd pulled over for a bit of a break at Amboy that July before finishing a run from Flagstaff to Barstow. Just before I restarted the engine, I heard an odd whimpering noise. Following it, I found a tiny thing huddled in what was left of the shade thrown by the abandoned gas station that was gradually shriveling in the desert sun. I was hit simultaneously by incredible relief that I'd found Jane before she'd died of exposure and by a raging hatred of whoever had abandoned her there.
Jane had started calling me "Mama" within a week. Even now, 10 years later, I could hardly believe that as a 15-year-old girl I'd become a four-year-old's mother. Frankly it's amazing that we both survived, considering that I'd been on the road since I was abandoned myself at 12 and had no idea of how to take care of a child.
It was fortunate that I'd learned early on that looking young and alone was more than an invitation to trouble. By 15 I'd learned how to make myself look like I was in my 20s, and now, at 25, I could easily look as if I were in my early 30s -- perfectly suitable for someone with a daughter Jane's age.
Unfortunately Jane was the trusting sort, though it had been almost three years this time before she'd made a slip and the incipient attention of Child Welfare had necessitated us skipping town again.
Oh well. Fresno wasn't the most comfortable city in the world anyway. Since we had to leave, and because Jane said that she wanted to visit the Northwest, I'd said "what the heck." That's why the two of us and our three cats were headed north. Slowly, given the state of the car, but still northbound toward whatever lay ahead.
Every few miles a tiny scrap of our previous existence went out the window. After all, shredded documents have been known to be reassembled. But now, if someone REALLY wanted to find the papers, they'd have to comb 800 miles of roadside to gather those pieces.
< You're much too serious you know? You have absolutely no poetry in your soul. I did it that way because it felt good to do it like that. It was sorta romantic in a way. That's all. Shut up! No laughing allowed. We have a long way to go with this report, and I don't have time for your sophomoric sense of humor. What? Calm down? I don't need to calm down. I... AM... PERFECTLY... CALM! No more questions? You're going to sit there and not say anything else? Good. Keep it zipped and listen. This is going to take long enough as it is. >> The good thing about Fresno had been the ready access to forged documents. That was because the I-5 corridor through central California was the main route taken by many of the "undocumented workers" from Mexico and points south, and most of them eventually needed some sort of fake ID. Those good enough to fool the not-so-interested local employers were easy to find, but ones that would be considered valid by someone paying more attention to such were another thing. Fortunately those selling the former always had contacts with those handling the latter. The cost was an order of magnitude higher, but I had always felt that a craftsman with contacts in the government, and superb hacking skills, deserved pay commensurate with said skills. So now I was Heather Knight, and Jane was now...Jane. She never managed to keep any other name straight in her head. It didn't really matter though since "Jane" is more than common enough not to be noticeable. When I first found her, Jane had not remembered her surname, so she was now, after mulitple changes in the past 10 years, indifferent to whatever it currently was. I glanced down again and stroked her head. Such a complicated person. Overly trusting and with an unmeasurably high IQ. Thank God she was outgoing and made friends easily. I had no idea what I would have done with a female Sheldon Cooper. At the very least, this new (and hopefully final) move would probably be sufficient encouragement to get Jane to be careful enough that she wouldn't blunder again. The pain of losing friends over and over was an effective teaching tool. Just three more years and we'd be safe from those who kept trying (in their somewhat well-meaning, blundering way) to separate us. So, we motored on up to the Pacific Northwest. We spent a year checking things out, bumming around here and there from Vancouver, BC (too wet and gray) to Medford, Oregon (too dry and hot). We finally settled on Salem, Oregon for what struck me at the time as one of the strangest reasons ever. Jane had developed a passion for fly fishing. (Bordering on obsession if you ask me -- yeah, I know, you didn't ask did you sweetie? And, speaking of which, when are you going to stop reading my private diary over my shoulder?) Salem sits in the Willamette Valley, within less than an hour of a rather incredible number of streams to fish in. (And the fact that it's within an hour or so of the beach, Portland, and Eugene, not to mention within two hours of skiing in the winter doesn't hurt at all.) One of the local high schools, Sprague, also has a decent drama department. Having seen me work on myself to change my appearance and apparent age seems to have excited some girlish, pubescent fascination with acting in Jane. We got her enrolled and that was that. She started a year late, but hey, we'd been sorta busy. Ah, right, there is one other reason for the choice of Salem. It seems that it had a small shop that fascinated Jane nearly as much as fishing did. It sold spy equipment. As it turned out, the only thing that gets her attention as much as fishing does is microelectronics of all kinds. Unexpectedly that proved very useful and surprisingly lucrative. < 75% of said fishermen are males, and many of them are over 50 and successful businessmen. Well, duh, who else can afford the equipment and has the time? Fly fishing is so tedious that it makes my bones ache just watching it.>> Her combination of interests resulted in two things. 1) The fly-fishing fanatics swarmed around Jane like bees over a spilled truckload of molasses. Who'd believe a young girl like her, and so cute too, would want to take up their favorite sport? 2) Since there's not much to do but talk while fishing, they tended to ramble on about business, and their children or grandchildren, and their problems with security. Jane, being smart and resourceful -- she takes after me of course (Jane! STOP hitting me!) saw an opportunity waiting to be exploited, especially after stumbing over that little spy shop. A few of those fishermen had daughters or granddaughters Jane's age so she got introduced around. After visiting a few homes of the rich but not-so-famous, she was able to spot numerous security problems. Then all she had to do was drop some subtle hints about this rather amazing, confidential security business she knew of, and they were hooked without knowing it. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. One of the basic tenets of fly fishing is to be subtle about setting the hook. (Hah! You thought I never listened to you while you were rambling on about fishing, didn't you Jane?) Said security business, Hornet Enterprises, LLC consisted of one person, Jane. Her visits to her fishing friends' homes were usually as a twenty something male. (Yes rib corsets serve admirably as breast binders too.) After a few break-ins were foiled, business took off, especially as would-be clients found out that there was no listed phone number. The only way to contact Hornet was by referral from an existing client. All I can say is: What a GREAT marketing gimmick! In no time at all the truly rich and famous, were clamoring to be clients. Most cared less about how good their security was than they did about having that pink hornet mounted outside their homes to prove how important they were. Jane didn't care all that much about the money. But, since she was going to work, she figured that she should arrange things so her income was as high as possible. That would allow her to spend more time "improving her equipment." At least she insisted that was the reason. Who knows? Maybe it really was. All appointments were evenings ones. Jane used the excuse of needing to see where the late afternoon shadows that burglars might hide in were. The reality was that she didn't have to cut classes to do her installations if they were late in the day. Not to mention that the low light levels helped her conceal her age and sex. Instead of 5 or 6 sensors, which most "security" companies installed, she used dozens. < Nobody got within a hundred yards of her clients without being detected. It didn't take long before word got around in the thieving community that you didn't mess with a house with the pink hornet emblem on it. < ------------------ This is Jane speaking -- sorta, I guess.. Yes I like pink. So what? Mama isn't telling you everything because she doesn't know everything. So...I'm going to fill you in. First of all, I stole this idea for adding things to Mama's diary that she won't know about from Robert Heinlein's book: Podkayne of Mars. Her little brother tended to add comments in her diary using ink that would disappear in 24 hours. Not quite the same thing, but it got me thinking, so here we are. Anyway, I'm involved in a bit more than just security. You see, a couple of times the thieves got past my systems. And Mama still doesn't know that I don't do only homes. There are a number of businesses and banks where I've improved security. Shhh, don't tell her. Hmm, got distracted there. They say that your parent's habits rub off on you. I'd rather that one hadn't. Oh well. So, a couple of thieves were successful -- for a time. You see, Mama has these interesting contacts in what you might loosely call the underworld. Not the big time criminals, but you have to have or know a good hacker and forger to get fake IDs that pass government security screens nowadays. Well, I got in touch with one, and through her I got in touch with a few more -- 62 to be exact -- all over the world. Now they all work for me. How'd I do that? Bait of course. Every fisherman knows that you have to use the right bait. At times you need a different fly for different times of day. One thing that works well as bait for just about all humans is money. Hackers don't necessarily love money as much as the challenge of hacking, but they do need money for equipment. Then again, some don't care about the money, but they love the newest toys like Google Glasses and the Oculus Rift. Back in 2010 they were still incredibly hard to get, so all I had to do was dangle them in front of my prospects and wait for them to bite. Then I set the hook and voila, they were working for me regularly. Starting from there, I gave them an opportunity. When one of my clients got hit, we hit back. No matter how hard they tried to hide their tracks (and some of the thefts were electronic) my hacker team could track down anyone. When we did, we drained (all right, stole) everything they had in the bank. No it doesn't really happen like on those silly TV programs where they hack into something in less than a minute. Sometimes it took several weeks to find them, but results matter more than speed in my line of work. The client always got back everything they'd lost. Usually they showered us with effusive praise, but, much more importantly, they frequently gave us referrals to more potential clients. Normally nobody expects a security business to be involved in recovery, so they were thrilled when we gave them back their money. My hacker team and I got everything over the amount lost. Splitting it 63 ways didn't always leave a lot, but it gave the entire team an incentive to work together -- something notoriously difficult to do with hackers. What did we do if someone didn't do his/her share of the work? They got hacked of course. After that happened to a couple of them, word got around, and there were no more problems. OK, enough of that. Returning control of your television to Mama -- yes a joke. You should look up an old TV series from the 1960's called The Outer Limits. This is Jane signing off for now. ------------------ Jane's forays into the wilds to enjoy the dubious pleasure of standing in waist deep, cold water for hours on end left me with not a lot to do once we got there, so out of desperation I took up painting. I never imagined that it would turn out to be such a great idea. Seems that I'm more than just pretty good at it. It's only been a few years, but my landscapes already go for several thousand dollars. What a great cover! < I've been on my own since I was 12. That's 18 years now. You can't live on air. So, like all precocious runaways, I developed a specialty. I'm a courier. A very special kind of courier. Businesses and rich people have things that they need moved from one place to another with absolutely NOBODY knowing what was moved or even that the transfer has happened. Even messages sometimes need to be hand-delivered. Email always leaves a record on multiple servers, and that's led to some very messy lawsuits and embarrassed politicians. You've probably read about quite a few, or at least seen them on TV. When a teen dressed in a jeans skirt and tights with one blue leg and one pink, hair in a blue and red mohawk, and enough piercings to set off a metal detector from 20 feet away walks into a business, nobody ever looks at her face. Most people spend as much time as possible looking away so as not to be contaminated by whatever it is that just came in the door. (No the piercings weren't real. The idea of intentionally putting that many holes in my body makes me shudder.) Then you say: "Mom said that I HAVE to talk to Mr. Howard T. Richards and nobody else!" If you can do it with a loud nasal whine and look really put upon, they take you right back to his office so none of the other customers have to look at you and decide that maybe this place isn't exclusive enough for them after all. Mr. Richards (or whoever you're seeing) has already been clued in that his courier will ask for him with a wrong middle initial. He gives you the package, you leave 5 minutes later, and stalk out of the building while complaining loudly that you didn't want to do business with this snooty place anyway. This has two functions. First, you leave with nobody looking at you closely. Secondly the elitist customers pat themself on the back for dealing with a business that cares about the fine sensibilities of its clients and clearly won't let the common rabble in. This usually filters back to the higher-ups who employed you. They're much more likely to hire you in the future when you enhance their reputation as well as deliver their clandestine packages safely. < Back to covers. Our expeditions all over the Northwest fishing and painting were great misdirection for our other businesses. Not to mention that we made a bunch of useful contacts. Plus, after four years of living in Fresno, the idea of getting outdoors rather than staying inside under air conditioning had a great deal of appeal. As a matter of fact, we discovered that we truly loved the Northwest. As I was getting a bit too old for the teen act, it was fortuitous that I could now pick things up under the guise of delivering paintings. Not to mention that the courier fees were augmented by what I charged for the paintings. That helped keep the income taxes straight -- and gave the client another tax writeoff. Of course we pay taxes! Me under my real name, Karla Knight, and Jane through her business. No matter what bad publicity it may have had recently, you REALLY don't want the IRS after you for non-payment of taxes. Especially if they might find out that you have an under-age child living with you who isn't related. Speaking of said under-age child, some of you might be wondering why I went to so much trouble to keep Jane with me. After all, it was hard, and sorta illegal. In the beginning, why didn't I just give Child Welfare a call myself and insist that we had to stay together? My answer to that? Would you mind terribly if I called you a moron, with a capital M? I'll admit that a few workers there try to do their best to make the system work properly. Unfortunately there's too few of them and too much rigidity in the system. Not to mention that many of the workers are dead-enders who are desperate to keep their jobs in an era of downsizing and poor economy. To do that you can't make waves. So, let's see, two minor kids, 11 years apart in age, and not related to each other. Want to stay together? Tough luck. Both straight into foster care, different homes. Nobody would want both of them anyway -- not that anyone would bother to check first. End of the matter and a commendation for prompt action, or at least no reprimands. Let me tell you now, nobody understands an abandoned kid like another abandoned kid. There was no way in hell that I was going to leave Jane to the not-so-tender mercies of the state bureaucracy. That's the end of that, and don't bring it up again, OK?