"Okay, I'll just get your signature here, and initials here," Colton smiled at the young man across the table as he slid a set of standard documents. "Once that's done, I'll take my handy stamp her, and we'll be done."
Brandishing an extremely worn notary stamp that would have probably necessitated a replacement and immediate disposal had it been found in a more reputable bank or title office, Colton smiled as an illegible signature and initials were scrawled in their appropriate boxes. In his experience, most people somehow managed to mix up their signatures and initials, or just sign in places where no indicator of a signature existed. Sometimes one had to be thankful for those small miracles, Colton thought to himself.
Taking the document back once the signatures were complete, Colton softly applied his stamp (apparently stamps can become surprisingly brittle after years of neglect and intermittent usage) and whistled as the bulk of the work was completed.
"Congratulation! You are now the owner of one notarized vehicle title. That will be $75 dollars for the stamp and for the in-person travel costs."
Receiving his payment, Colton stood up, threw his Jansport backpack over his shoulder (it worked in high school, it continued to work 17-years later as an adult, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it), exchanged handshakes with the man he would very likely never see again, and walked out the door to where his bicycle was chained to a No Parking sign in front of his now former-client's dilapidated brownstone apartment.
Colton's bicycle epitomized function over form, and even then, barely function. With most of the paint having flaked off over the years, the heavy steel frame was solid enough to weather the numerous mild crashes (usually not his fault) that had occurred as time passed, but nearly every other piece besides the frame had been replaced in a Ship of Theseus style process which resulted in a monstrosity of mismatched colors and even shapes. As certain pieces would inevitably start to fail, Colton always kept an eye out for inexpensive replacements for things his pedals, chain, brakes, or derailers. He had also found multiple baskets, bags, and attachments to add onto the bike which allowed him to carry nearly his own weight in additional goods if necessary. Could he have afforded a car? Probably, but it would require earning and saving to a degree he had never exhibited a capacity for at this point in his life. Could he renew his license which he allowed to expire after he had first earned it when he turned 16? Again, yes, but without a car the time and renewal fee seemed a pointless expenditure. His bike had served him for over a decade at this point, and he had no reason to believe it would not keep serving him for the foreseeable future.
On the ride back, Winston thought over how to spend his money now that he was, relatively speaking, flush with cash. He owed his roommate, in all honestly, probably the entirety of the $75 and then some in "borrowed" food alone, so he would set aside about half of it to partially restock their fridge. Another $10 would make sure his "pay-as-you-go" mobile internet plan could, in fact, keep going. He would probably steal a roll or two of toilet paper from the public restroom of whatever grocery store he decided to patronize (it is there for the customers after all), so no need to spend any money restocking that. After a new toothbrush and a bar of soap to replace the tiny splinter left in his shared apartment, Winston would probably "save" the remaining funds that were now in the single digits.
Home for Colton was an apartment he shared with his lifelong best friend Winston. The term "apartment" was probably a little generous of a term, and a more realistic designation would probably be "cheaply retrofitted large workshop in their landlord’s backyard." Still, it had a bedroom for Colson, a large enough shared space for a futon Winston used as a bed, utilities that stayed consistently connected (except in the cases of heavy wind or rain in which case the do-it-yourself wiring tended to come loose), and a kitchen with a refrigerator and just enough counterspace to fit the toaster oven that cooked nearly all their meals.
Picking up his bike to bring inside (Winston no longer trusted leaving his bike outside after his wheels were stolen when his bike was not "properly" secured outside his apartment), he also grabbed a small package addressed to his roommate. He noticed there was no return address, and that no other mail had been delivered, but honestly thought nothing of it as the vagaries of postal delivery were hardly something he felt motivated to ponder at the moment.
Walking inside, he hung his bike on the hook he and Winston had jury-rigged after the illicit bicycle tire appropriation in order to preserve what little space they had, and tossed the package onto their meagre counterspace for when his roommate returned. Into the refrigerator and cupboards, he emptied the groceries he'd purchased: some pastries placed on the bargain rack due to impending staleness, the cheapest dozen eggs the store had available, some iffy produce ready to be tossed out he had requisitioned from his contact at the grocery store for $5, and a 24-pack of the store brand pop-tart knockoff.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
From the now semi-fully restocked food supply, he grabbed six eggs to throw in their egg boiler, one of the bargain pastries that seemed determined to harden with maximum haste, and a glass of tap water. 'Dinner is served' Colton thought to himself with a smirk. One could never accuse him of worrying overly about his health, but he could usually get things produce fairly cheaply, and knew enough about cooking and had enough spare to make passably decent meals for himself and his roommate routinely. This tended to be cheaper than take-out which was almost always less healthy, and while he would not turn down expiring sugary pastries for a quick snack, usually healthy cooked meals combined with limited calories linked to poverty meant he easily avoided obesity.
Flopping down on his couch/bed, Colton set his dinner on the end-table that, to an undistinguished viewer, might appear to be simply an abandoned wooden spool that once held metal cable, but was actually the height of low-income bachelor interior decorating. The apartment was a bastion of furniture and appliances purchased from second-hand stores, garage sales, or, like the futon and end-table, were saved from abandonment on a sidewalk close enough to carry home. He grabbed his personal laptop that had been safely secured in its storage spot (slid underneath the futon), flipped open the lid and powered it on.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that when it comes to personal computing, if one is motivated by a shoestring budget, a 15-year-old computer purchased from a second-hand store can have a lightweight Linux operating system installed on it. The laptop will then technically function for internet browsing, so long as the web surfer is not in a particular hurry and willing to deal with occasional freezes and crashes. Luckily, Colton's internet browsing activities tended to not be resource intensive, and much like the rest of his life, was not particularly hurried. Thankfully the neighbors continued to leave their Wi-Fi secured with an easily guessed password, and paid for a reasonably fast internet connection.
Colton ran through his standard list of tasks: look for any gigs as a background actor on nearby television or movie productions, check his emails to see if anyone needed an in-person notary visit or even a quickie marriage ceremony (becoming a registered "minister" able to sign marriage certificates is surprisingly easy as it turned out), or see if anyone had responded to his offer for in-home personal training (also a surprisingly easy certificate to get). In Colton's opinion, any job that required him to plan more than a month in advance was far too much commitment, and his job searches and paychecks greatly reflected this attitude.
Seeing a lack of quick gigs he could do in the coming days, Colton then navigated to Amazon's mechanical Turk to look for some easy jobs he could knock out for a few dollars while he let some YouTube videos Autoplay. Eventually settling upon a task where he was asked to validate the machine recognition categorization of images, he laughed at the Ouroboros technology had created: captchas use humans to train machine learning algorithms to recognize objects, those algorithms then begin categorizing images based on human input, human input is then used to further train those algorithms even more...and eventually Skynet becomes self-aware on August 29th, 1997 (now three decades past, so running a little late).
While in mid-click to scold an algorithm over a mischaracterization of a rabbit as a cat, the egg boiler led out a piercing ring letting Colton know that the second course of his dinner was now complete. Setting his laptop to the side, he jumped up to turn off the egg boiler, and noticed the package that was sitting next to it. The steam from the egg boiler had been ample enough that it managed to soak one side of the package pretty thoroughly. Grabbing the non-soaked package, he picked it up and brought it over to the couch.
Colton and Winston had been friends since they met in 8th grade English class, and had managed to stick around each other for every year since. Having been roommates since they first went to community college upon graduating high school, they had pretty much seen every unpleasant corner of each other’s life. While each had secrets from each other, they tended to lean towards the "I ate your leftovers and feigned ignorance" rather than "I am in a secret correspondence with a long-distance lover." For this reason, Colton thought little of opening his roommate's package in order to make sure that whatever it contained was not damaged by the moistened section of the box.
Out from the box came a USB-thumb drive, and what appeared to be a small headset-although it's design almost made it look like more of a tiara than anything. Lastly, there was a small hand written note that read: "Winston-we need your help"