The weather was changing, but at this elevation we still had plenty of snow on the ground. I was fairly sure that Dad was getting tired of crackers, clam chowder, and chicken noodle soup. I had to get him some real food and that meant going into Medford for groceries and other supplies. Normally we would take the truck on such a run, but with Dad in recovery and the truck offline it was up to me. With two sleds I could bring back more than enough provisions for both of us. I took a look in our storage locker, just six of the twelve battery clusters were complete. We needed at least fifteen thousand dollars to get the materials to finish our rebuild of the replacement pack. Sometimes I wish Dad had never bought that EV truck, but back then we had a house and could charge at home, it wasn’t a big deal, but up here tri-fuel hybrids from Anderson LTD was the way to go. I showered, got dressed and put on my Rig. I slipped a fleece jacket over it to check in on Dad.

“Hey,” I said, peeking around his curtain. “I am going into town to get us some supplies; you want anything?”

Dad sat up, still dazed from last night’s pain meds. He looked at his watch, then he looked up at me.

“Yeah, some more of that clam chowder we like would be good. Some chicken noodle soup and those crackers we always get, you know the garlic ones.”

“Ok,” I said, concerned, noticing his demeanor. “You’ve been eating that all week, you don’t want anything else?”

“Some Blueberry scones from that bakery in town would be really nice.”

“Got it.” I said, “Anything else?”

“No, just be careful in town, Eddie,” Dad said. “Watch yourself, you know what to do.”

“I do and I will,” I said. “Be back in about four hours ok.”

Dad was out; I shoved him closer to the center of the bed, placed pillows under his arms, and covered him. I remember, when I was sick as a kid, Dad would sleep on the giant panda pillow in my room. When I would wake up in the middle of the night and call out for him, he would always say; “I am right here kiddo”. I’d wake up so thirsty. Dad would sit me up and hand me an ice-cold glass of apple juice. I remember his reassuring hand on my back as I drank, and somehow I just knew everything would be ok. The juice felt good going down, and it was like I could feel myself coming back and getting better again. Now it was my turn to take care of him. I read these stories all the time online about people that hated their childhood, but I never did. The only thing I wanted was for us all to be happy and safe. Life wasn’t perfect back then, but it was certainly better than how we live now. As far as I was concerned, up until the crash, life was actually pretty good, but that all changed.

I set up both sleds in series and hitched them to my snowmobile. With Dad’s list and my own in hand, I headed out for the long ride to Medford.

“Eddie, we have an update.” The Seven Samurai said.

“I’m listening.”

“The Medford Sheriff’s office put out a BOLO for Cindy Rennolds this morning on their social media page. She is wanted for questioning in connection with the disappearance of the Town’s namesake.”

“Where is she now?”

“Unknown.” The Seven said, “According to local radio chatter, Sheriff’s deputies have checked with relatives, as well as known associates, and so far they have nothing. No one has heard from her since the day of the shooting.”

“Stay on it, Seven.”

“We will, Eddie.”

I got about twenty miles in, as I crossed the mountain road to get to the other side of the trail. I saw an SUV with California plates pulled over on the side of the road. A man, a woman, and his daughter, and none of them looked particularly happy. The man wasn’t dressed well for the cold; he kept looking at his phone, holding it above his head as he turned in circles looking for a signal. I approached, lifting my visor.

“Looks like you could use some help?” I said.

“I have roadside assistance.” The man said. “Can’t seem to get a signal up here.”

“My name is Eddie. Looks like you got a flat. Do you have a spare?”

“Yeah, it’s in the back under all our luggage. My name is Jack by the way, Jack Sorenson, this is my wife Jill and my daughter Lauren.”

Leaning in, I waved at each as Jack continued his search for a signal.

“Good to meet you all, Jill and Lauren,” I said. “Can you open the back?”

The wife, Jill, smiled, reached over and popped open the rear hatch. His daughter Lauren got out to help me move their luggage and overnight bags so I could get to the spare.

“Hey, I can move that out of your way,” Lauren said, moving the bags. “Do you live around here?”

“Yeah, at the Valley’s End RV park just south of here,” I said. “I need your jack and the vehicle lifting pucks.”

“Got them right here,” Lauren said, handing me the jack and the case.

Unlike her dad she, was well dressed for the weather. I looked over at her father Jack, and he was still searching around for a signal.

“So, how old are you?” Lauren asked.

“Just turned seventeen yesterday.” I said, “You?”

“Five more months to go.” Lauren said. “Once I turn seventeen, I’m joining the US Space Force.”

With the last of the bags unloaded, I was able to get to the spare.

“Jack, did you get a signal?” His wife Jill asked, leading toward the driver’s side window.

“No,” Jack said, annoyed. “That is what I am trying to do now.”

“So, you haven’t even called them yet?” Jill asked.

“It’s a mountainous area Jill, it’s hard to get a signal.” Jack said, “So no, I haven’t been able to reach roadside assistance yet.”

“But you said they were on their way ten minutes ago,” Jill asked, growing annoyed with the situation.

“No.” Jack said, “I said as soon as I can get them, they will be on their way.”

While Jack and Jill argued, I set the vehicle’s emergency brake, activated the warning flashers, put out signal flares, and jacked up the vehicle to change the tire. Picking up the spare, I realized it was completely deflated.

“Your spare is flat,” I said, “Looks new though, no damage. Let me get my inflater, I’ll be right back.”

I went over and opened the top box on my snowmobile, taking Dad's tire inflator. The battery was at eighty-nine percent. I connected it and re-inflated the tire.

“You carry a pump around with you all the time?” Lauren asked.

“My dad is a mechanic; these are his tools.”

“What can I do to help?” Lauren asked.

“You can hand me those lug nuts,” I said.

I took the old flat tire off and put the new spare on. I let the vehicle off the jack and placed the lift pucks back in the case.

“Well, that was easy,” Lauren said.

“It was just a flat tire,” I said.

Jack, now realizing the tire had been changed, stopped looking for a signal and helped Lauren and I repack the back of the SUV.

“Hey, thanks, we appreciate your help.” Jack said, holding out one hundred dollars, “For your trouble.”

“No need, sir,” I said. “But if I were you, I would get a SkyLink phone in Medford. You don’t want to be caught out here with no way to call for help.”

“Thanks, I will have to remember that,” Jack said as he shook my hand and climbed back in.

“Well,” Lauren said, “Thanks for coming to our rescue, Eddie.”

“It’s no problem, really.”

“Give me your phone.” Lauren asked, holding out her hand.

“My phone?” I asked as I handed it to her.

“What kind of phone is this?” Lauren asked. “And why is it so thick?”

“Technically, it’s a SkyLink phone,” I said. “This is just the interface. Most of the other radios are in my Rig here see. It handles SkyLink, cellular, LoRa mesh, CB, and short-range peer-to-peer, so I only have to carry one device.”

I untipped my fleece jacket to show her the top section of my Rig.

“Wow, you built this yourself?” Lauren asked as she turned the phone over in her hands. “That’s cool. Here. Text me. We can hang out sometime, maybe when you are in town?”

“I will,” I said.

“Hey,” Laura said as she was about to climb in to leave. “Don’t you forget about me.”

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t you watch old movies?” Lauren asked. “The Breakfast Club?”

“Yeah, it’s one of my Dad’s favorites, actually,” I said.

“See you around, Eddie.”

“Yeah, see you later, Lauren.”

I said goodbye to the Sorenson family as they pulled away and set back out on the trail into town. On the way, I pulled over to check out a red and white poster affixed to a signpost along the edge of the trail. It was a missing person notice for Timothy Medford, the same man that went by the name “Tommy.” The man that tried to rob us. I raised my visor to get a better look.

“Hey Seven, are you seeing this?”

“Yes, posted by a member of his family,” The Seven said in one combined voice, “One of his cousins in town according to footage captured on Main Street in Medford.”

“That the best photo they could get of him?”

“Apparently so. I found the same photo online, it is from an article about last year’s flood. Timothy Medford was one of the few that survived the washout of the bridge. This photo was taken on that day; Medford Search and Rescue saved his life.”

“Eddie?”

“Yes, Seven?”

“Are we going to talk about the Lauren thing?”

“No, we are not, Seven.”

“Ok.”

I closed my helmet visor, twisted the throttle, and headed across the road on my way to town. I made my first stop at a place called Stewart’s Meats, where I spent four hundred dollars on elk and beef steaks. It was prediction market money, so it had zero impact on our household budget. Dad didn’t need to know, besides even if he found out, all he’d do is complain that I’d spent too much. Nevertheless, figured he’d earned a decent meal, something nutrient-dense as Mom used to say. Two more stops before heading back down the trail. I coasted over to the next store to pick up the rest of our supplies. As I loaded up and secured locking cargo nets over the tow sleds holding our supplies, the collar of my Rig vibrated.

“Eddie?” the seven whispered in a calm voice.

“I’m listening, Seven.”

“Radio chatter on law enforcement frequencies is reporting that a woman matching Cindy Rennolds description has been spotted squatting in a vacant seasonal rental property just outside of Medford.”

“You have an address?”

“Going there now is not advised. There will be law enforcement personnel present, and you will only end up making your current situation even worse.”

“The address,” I insisted sternly. “Give it to me. Seven!”

“That is not advised.” The Seven said. “We will assist you in other ways but not this.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” I said, “I do. I created you.”

“Yes, you did, and you were wise enough then to know that you needed protection. When you made us, you gave us independence, agency, the ability to analyze a situation, to choose and to take action to protect you. At the moment, you are being impulsive, Eddie. Your heart rate and stress levels are both elevated. You are understandably worried about your father, but I must say this plainly: you have taken responsibility for solving a problem that is not yours to solve. Your father is the one that needs to settle this matter, not you. This is not your problem to fix alone.”

I took a deep breath, frustrated, both with the Seven and the entire situation.

“Then tell me, how do we fix this mess?

“The solution is for your father to contact an attorney and arrange a meeting with the Sheriff to explain what happened. I have already selected three attorneys for you to choose from when you are both ready to pursue that option.”

“For God’s sake, Seven, I will find the address myself,” I said as I pulled out my tablet.

“We have already purged the radio transcripts and logs; we made sure they cannot be recovered.”

“Why are you working against me?”

“We are not.” The Seven said. “We are doing what you asked, protecting and assisting you. If you go to the address where Cindy Rennolds was last seen, you will attempt to speak with her. She will not react well to this. Projected sequence: she will run, you will pursue, and now, to law enforcement, you are perceived as an obsessed seventeen-year-old stalking an older female. You would be arrested and quickly identified by Cindy. The Rig would be taken and held as evidence separating us. Your father would be pulled out of bed, arrested and held in county lockup while still trying to recover from his injury. This is but one of many scenarios; we have thousands more.”

I took a deep breath realizing that the Seven Samurai of course are right. I hated admitting it, but the Seven could see farther down the road than I could. The Seven never raise their voices, they don’t argue. They simply reach a consensus, and once they do, changing their minds is nearly impossible. They weren’t always right, but they were never reckless. I had to trust them.

“So, then what do you suggest, Seven?”

“We suggest that you pick up some Blueberry scones.”

“And how will that help us, exactly?” I asked.

“Because the bakery in town that has the scones your father likes is located on the street behind the Sheriff’s office, which is well within our wireless scanning range.

“Well,” I said, “Let’s do some scanning then, shall we?”

I secured our supplies and headed toward Main Street. The bakery was tucked inside the Straight Arrow Coffee Shop, directly behind the Sheriff’s Office. From the back corner, I had a clear line of sight through the windows to the side parking lot. I ordered a blueberry scone and hot chocolate before settling down into my seat. The Seven quietly went to work.

I took out my tablet and monitored the scan; wireless networks and devices began filling the screen. The bakery came up first, followed by dozens more bleeding through the walls. Businesses, surrounding apartments, vehicles on the street, and even a few passersby. Half the devices the Seven identified were older than I was. People kept them alive with whatever open-source operating system still supported their hardware because buying something new from Vietnam or India simply wasn’t an option for most people anymore. There was a glut of abandoned technology still out there from companies that no longer existed. Unsecured smart light bulbs, door locks, thermostats, first-generation SkyLink phones, end-of-life delivery drones, and first-gen domestic robots. Most hadn’t received a security update in years. For others, there simply were no updates available. Within minutes, the Seven cataloged each device as it searched. I scrolled through the list of surrounding devices on my tablet, and there was no shortage of vulnerable hardware to leverage, but we needed something that actually touched the Sheriff’s systems. As I looked through the growing list, one device appeared highlighted in red, listed as MSDOfficeMainMFP.

“MSD, that stands for Medford Sheriff’s Department, doesn’t it?

“That appears to be the case, yes,” the Seven said.

“It’s an old multifunction printer?”

“Yes,” the Seven replied. “The printer is running firmware released back in 2027. All devices on the network use a common naming convention. Abbreviated office name, then WS for workstation and a four-digit number, most likely the last four digits of the department’s SkyLink phones.”

“Cross-reference their public phone directory and match names to numbers.”

“Already ahead of you, Eddie,” the Seven said.

“The Sheriff’s Office network is flat; there is no internal segmentation. The vulnerable printer resides on the same trusted network as the internal office workstations. Same for dispatch, all smart door locks and the security camera system. The printer’s factory default credentials remain in place.”

“Well,” I said, taking a bite of my scone. “That was generous of them.”

The Seven continued as I monitored progress with my tablet, watching the Seven log in to the MFP.

“Username: Admin, Password: MFPAdmin321#”

“Seriously, Seven?”

“Apparently so, Eddie. Default credentials accepted, admin console access established. Continuing enumeration of additional reachable hosts, lateral movement in progress.”

As the Seven continued to scan each device they came across, the highlighted list on my tablet switched from red to green. I sipped my hot chocolate as I tried not to draw attention to myself. As more locals and tourists arrived, my screen filled with new device names that came into our scanning range. I filtered out SkyLink phones as I browsed through the list. As I looked around, I realized how oblivious everyone was to the ocean of data flowing all around them. Their phones, rings, watches, and pacemakers. Their cars, micro drones, and robots, all of it swirling around us and through us nearly every moment of every day within a persistent invisible landscape of information.

“I have captured a set of login credentials,” The Seven said, “With local admin permissions. The account profile appears on all systems scanned so far. Looks like this account was used to set up all their office systems.”

The Seven proceeded to use those credentials to install remote access tools on individual workstations across the Sheriff department’s entire office network. We now had multiple ways back in if necessary.

“Looks like their internal security cameras are made by Gaggle.” I said, scrolling down the list.

“Correct,” The Seven said, “The town council signed a contract with them years ago, but citizens kept cutting the cameras down in protest over privacy concerns. It has been a back-and-forth fight ever since.”

“Problem?” I asked.

“No.” The Seven said, “Captured credentials accepted, security camera console access established.”

I took a sip of my cocoa and reached down to plug in the power adapter for my Rig to top off the battery. The Seven went into the printer’s admin console and turned on the feature that automatically stores every copied document and uploads it to Gaggle’s cloud. The Seven then set up a scheduled task on the security camera workstation that sends a backup copy of every document to another legitimate cloud storage service that only we have access to. If any document were copied, we would receive a copy.

“We have eyes,” The Seven said, “Now we need ears. These old Gaggle cameras have built-in microphones, but the audio quality on this model is terrible.”

“We’ll make it work,” I said. “It should be fine.”

“Visual confirmation is sufficient. I can infer the remainder through lipreading.”

“Eddie, radio chatter on law enforcement bands is reporting that Cindy is being brought in for questioning now.”

“How long before she arrives?”

“Well,” The Seven said. “Now that I have access to the dispatcher’s workstation, I can see precisely where the unit that went to pick her up is located. ETA: nine minutes. The live map is on your tablet now.”

I zoomed in, watching two green dots on the map; one labeled “Lieutenant Marshall,” the other “Cindy Rennolds.” I watched in anticipation as the police unit slowly made its way back to the Sheriff’s office in Medford. Just over the edge of my tablet, a pair of hiking boots with red laces stepped into view. I looked up; it was Lauren.

“My Hero,” Lauren said, smiling like a Cheshire cat as she stood in front of me, attempting to peek at my tablet.

“Lauren, what are you doing here?”

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The throttle was pinned on the straightaways as I took the main road back to the park. The weather was bad; visibility was poor, and it was getting worse by the minute. The snow was coming down hard as darkness closed in around us. I tried as best I could to prevent our caravan from fishtailing while steering clear of the uneven roadway. All I could see on the ride back was a cone of light from my headlamp cutting through streaking lines of snowfall. The full moon pierced through the storm giving me enough light to keep an eye on my father. He was snugly tucked away between our backpacks in the rear tow sled, covered with overlapping thermal blankets and tarps. I knew he had to be in a lot of pain back there with all that bouncing around, but I had to get him help, the main road is both faster and smoother than the forest trails we took on the way up. Dad always said to expect the unexpected, but I got to admit, I never saw this coming. One man dead, a witness heading back into town and me hauling ass through a snowstorm with what I estimate to be around forty pounds of stolen copper cabling.

“I call on the Seven.” I said into my throat mic.

Within seconds, my sovereign AI, the Seven Samurai, responded, their voices all combined into one.

“We are aware of your current situation. Do you consent to the Seven taking actions on your behalf?”

“Yes.” I said.

As I focused on getting Dad and our haul back in one piece, the Seven went into action. They took control of my radio, a function I authorized for situations like this. They changed over to the local community frequency and contacted the park doctor, a man whose last name I couldn’t remember.

“Connecting to Doctor William Holland.” The Seven said.

“Doc Holland this is Eddie Clayburn, the Mechanic’s son!”

“This is Holland! What’s your situation?”

“It’s my Dad, he needs help, he’s got an arrow stuck in his upper right thigh, he’s stable, I am coming in on the main road, just three miles out!”

“Bring him straight to me young man we’ll get him patched up.” Holland said.

“See you soon.”

The Seven sent Doc Holland my father’s military medical records and tracking data from the biofeedback ring he uses to manage his PTSD. It tracks his sleep quality, but it also has a bunch of other health monitoring features. All of it was sent off to Doc Holland ahead of our arrival at the clinic.

“Let me talk to Dad!”

The Seven changed the channel back to the frequency reserved for today’s job.

“Go ahead.” The Seven said.

“Dad, what’s your status back there?”

“Warm and toasty,” Dad said. “I could use a Whisky though.”

“Roger that! We’re almost there.” I smiled, relieved his spirits were high despite our circumstances.

Pine trees whipped past me like swipes between screens. Along the way I caught the first indicators of perimeter lights around the northern end of the park, I was close now and I laid on the throttle as I came around the bend.

“Eddie, we have been monitoring law enforcement frequencies.” The Seven said. “There have been no reports of shootings or missing persons either online, radio, or social media. We also checked legal statutes regarding the current situation. Under ideal circumstances, the shooting involving your father would probably qualify as self-defense under Colorado law considering the fact that Tommy was armed, he made an immediate and deadly threat, and he ignored repeated warnings to lower his weapon. Once he raised the crossbow to fire, your father acted to protect you both.”

“Thank God.” I murmured.

“However.” The Seven said. “These are less than ideal circumstances. What complicates this is the fact that everyone was already involved in active crimes of one sort or another. Now this fact does not automatically erase the possibility of a valid self-defense case, but it means that local law enforcement will probably investigate the matter, question witnesses, track and audit every timeline of every person they come across including Cindy’s.

“New task.” I said. “I need anything and everything you can find on Cindy and Tommy in the public domain, background, socials, net archive, and dark web. Same for the Sheriff and anyone else in town that might be looking into all this.”

“Acknowledged task running.” The Seven said. “What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know yet Seven, I don’t know.”

We finally arrived as I steered my jerry-rigged snowmobile caravan right up to the front of Doc Holland’s clinic. Holland’s assistant, a large, mute man named Magnus, lifted Dad from the tow sled as if he were as light as a feather and carried him inside.

“Put him on the table right here.” Holland said.

Dad grunted through the pain as we got him situated. Holland looked at Dad’s medical profile on his tablet.

“Alex Clayburn. Your son sent me your complete medical history and live vitals. Very thorough, much appreciated.”

The Doctor moved a light over to take a closer look at Dad’s leg.

“Nice dressing on that, you do this?” Doc asked looking at me over the top of his glasses.

“Yes sir, I did.” I said.

“You have a very smart and capable young man here, Mr. Clayburn.”

“Of course, he’s my Son,” Dad said proudly.

“Still proud enough to be annoying, I see,” Holland said with a wink. “Well, that’s a promising sign.”

“Hey, Doc,” Dad said. “I thought you were the local veterinarian.”

“I am. I’m also the local package-delivery driver, community mailman, unofficial Mayor, and the only doctor you’ll find south of Medford. That is, unless you’d prefer to wait for a medevac out of Colorado Springs in this weather, otherwise you get what you get, and tonight, that’s me.”

Doctor Holland immediately got to work, cutting away the old dressing as he tossed the blood-stained bandages into a medical waste bin. Magnus, his silent assistant, prepared an imaging machine I had never seen before.

“What type of device is that?” I asked.

“This?” Holland said, holding it up for me to see. “I call it the Holland Medical Imager. It combines ultrasound and passive millimeter wave imaging. I developed the technology over fifteen years ago, but no one in the medical device industry was interested in it. I never got the funding to mass produce it but, I kept the original prototype, and I have been refining the design on my own ever since. I find that, it has its uses.”

Holland worked carefully as he removed the last of the old bandages revealing the injury.

“Yep.” Doc Holland said. “That’s a crossbow arrow all right. Well, let me get a scan before we clean that and take it out.”

The Doctor positioned a monitor for us to watch his work. He put on a set of 3D FPV goggles as he manipulated his custom device. The imager provided vivid three-dimensional renders of the internal structures of my father’s leg.

“Doesn’t look like it hit an artery or the bone.” Doc Holland said, removing his goggles as he pushed the imager away. “Looks through-and-through, you got lucky.”

“Yeah, I feel very lucky right now,” Dad said through the pain with a sarcastic smirk.

“Alright, this is for you, Mr. Clayburn. Open up.” Doc Holland said placing a colored stick in Dad’s mouth before he had a chance to protest. “It’s a Neravex Lollipop 800mcg. This one is, Ooooooh look at that, Strawberry Kiwi, yummy. I made them myself; it will help with the pain, I can promise you that. The real ones are like gold now with all the shortages. So, homemade pain meds are the way to go like everything else now it seems.”

Doc Holland snapped his fingers to get his assistant’s attention.

“We need some Zidocaine here, please. Thank you.” Doc Holland said with a comforting smile.

Within seconds, Holland’s assistant brought the Zidocaine over as he checked Dad’s vitals and saline drip. Doc Holland seemed fully in his element, humming along to some internal song that only he could hear. The Doc and his assistant moved in seamless coordination with one another, as if running a well-rehearsed show that had been performed thousands of times. As he cleaned each end of the arrow shaft, the Doctor looked over Dad’s many old scars, burns and scrapes from the war on his chest, abdomen and legs.

“You know, Alex,” Holland said, “You keep looking at me like I am going to ask how or why. The truth is, I don’t want to know, and I don’t care. Your business is yours.”

“I appreciate your discretion Doctor,” Dad said. “Eddie go secure the sleds. I’ll be ok now. After everything is put away, bring the good jack back with you.”

“Yes sir.” I said as I went to tend to the vehicles and our copper haul.

I took the copper we collected and locked it all in the RV’s floor vault storage system for safekeeping. As I was about to head back, the collar of my Rig vibrated. I activated my earpiece as I stopped to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I performed a quick check of the connections on my Rig. A lightweight tactical vest fitted with everything the Seven Samurai needed to assist me; compute modules, lightweight batteries, encrypted storage, Cellular, CB, and LoRa radios, along with sensors, antennas, and a short-range jammer all coordinated and controlled via my custom AI orchestration gateway. The Rig was how I carried the Seven with me; it gave them eyes and ears. Through it, I taught them about our world. In time, they learned from what they had witnessed. I inspected and adjusted two buttons on my jacket, but these were not just ordinary buttons. Each housed a small, high-resolution, wide-angle camera and microphone unit inside a functional shell designed to look like a jacket button.

“Eddie we have something.” The Seven said, their voices united as one.

“Let’s hear it.”

“The individual referred to as Cindy is most likely a woman named Cindy Rennolds, a thirty-year-old native of Medford. She has no recent social media posts. Looks like her entries stopped back in 2028 after the crash and a brief stint in the online anti-technology movement, which I find rather ironic. At any rate, like so many others in those days, she lost her job, her home, her savings, and custody of her young son, who now lives with her parents. After that, she spiraled and was arrested for drug possession, public intoxication, and assault. She hasn’t had much of a web presence since coming out of rehab. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend and criminal associate went by the name Tommy, but his real name was Timothy Medford. A descendant of the same family of Medford’s that founded the town. Since the crash, he has cycled in and out of county jail on charges ranging from burglary to drug possession, public intoxication, assault, criminal trespass, and breaking and entering. The list is quite extensive.”

“I get the point,” I said. “What else?”

“Most of Timothy Medford’s family has cut off all ties with him.” The Seven said. “He is considered to be a bit of an embarrassment to his family and the town. He was not very well liked. Back in 2029, he was treated for methamphetamine addiction as a condition of his parole. He got clean, but within just three months, he was back in jail for drug possession.”

“Did you capture the shooting?”

“Of course.”

“Show me, please.”

My tablet pinged as the video of the incident was streamed directly to it from my Rig. I peeked over my shoulder for fear that, on an off chance, someone might be watching me. I paused the video right after I heard the shot. The muzzle flash from Dad’s pistol bloomed on the video like a frozen flower of fire. I stopped the video and closed it as my heart raced.

“No one else sees this,” I said. “Understood?”

“We understand, Eddie. You have not told your father about us or the Rig.”

“He knows you exist, but I haven’t exactly gone into detail about you.”

“At some point, you will have to tell him.”

“I know.” I said, “And when the time comes, I will.”

“We will continue monitoring; if anything changes, we will let you know.”

“Thank you, Seven.”

I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label, three glasses and headed back over to Doc Holland’s clinic. When I arrived, Dad was in a much better mood. His leg had been re-bandaged, and he was sitting up, relaxed, enjoying his painkillers.

“So, what do we owe you, Doc?” Dad asked.

“Bah, forget it Mr. Clayburn.” Doc said, waving his hands away. “You do a lot for the folks around here, including me; that’s payment enough.”

Holland’s eyes locked on the bottle of Jack Daniels as he and his assistant cleaned up.

“Thanks for patching me up,” Dad said. “I appreciate it.”

“So here you go,” Doc said, handing Dad a plastic bag of homemade pain-killing treats. Ten of my now-famous Neravex lollipops. Until I make another batch, that’s all I can spare, so I suggest you use them only when you really need them. One should give you a good six hours, maybe more of pain relief. I’d save them for the late evenings, assuming you still aspire to be at least somewhat lucid during the day.

Dad examined one through the plastic.

“Oh, I added a touch of THC, CBD, and melatonin, along with my special terpene blend. Alpha-humulene for soreness and linalool to ease the anxiety and smooth things out a bit. It should knock the edge right off and help you sleep. Trust me, I know. I test every batch myself.”

Dad motioned for me to set up, so I prepped three glasses and poured three shots. We all raised our glasses to toast.

“To being lucky.” Doc Holland said as he raised his glass in anticipation.

“To never again.” Dad said.

“To my--”

Before I could even speak, Dad plucked the shot glass right out of my hand and handed it to Magnus, Holland’s assistant.

“Nice try.”

“Come on, Dad, I will be seventeen in a few days.”

“Come on, Dad what? Seventeen isn’t twenty-one, and that’s the legal age to drink in this state, kiddo.”

“So, we are suddenly worried about legal stuff now?” I said.

Dad looked at me with wide eyes as he exhaled and held out his glass. I was already regretting my words. I looked at Doc Holland, anticipating his surprise, but he had already knocked back his shot and was now motioning for me to pour him another, so I did. Magnus said nothing as he finished off his shot, but he seemed completely unfazed by its potency. Second and third shots all around with one exception, for now at least. A quiet end to a very long day.

Back in the RV, I didn’t sleep much. All night, I kept looking out the window, expecting to see flashing lights surrounding our place. I read the reports the Seven Samurai did on Cindy, Tommy and the Sheriff. Tommy, it seems, was always a bit of a fuckup even before the crash. Cindy’s record only got worse after hooking up with Tommy. Sheriff Laurence Halt was interesting, 58 years old, a former US Marine and a former Chicago Detective, divorced three times.

“I call on the Seven.”

“Yes, Eddie.” the Seven whispered in unison.

“What’s your take on the Sheriff?”

“Men like Halt don’t end up in forgotten towns this high in the Colorado mountains by accident. It makes us wonder what brought him here, and what he might have been trying to leave behind.”

“Maybe he came here because he wanted a quieter life?

“Or because someone wanted him someplace far away and quiet.”

“What exactly was his job back in Chicago?”

“He spent twelve years with the Chicago Police Department,” The Seven said. “He started in patrol and transferred to the Gang Investigations Division within just three years. He eventually made detective. His final assignment was with the Major Crimes Unit, where he investigated homicides, armed robberies, and organized criminal activity.”

“What do you think this means for Dad’s situation?”

“If Halt believes your father is involved, he will keep pressing until the story breaks; it’s what men like him do.”

“What’s going on with Cindy? She should have gone to the cops by now. Still no hits on her?

“Nothing so far,” the Seven said. “Given her criminal record and the number of qualifying convictions against her, she is probably afraid to come forward. Showing up at the Sheriff’s office with a dead man in the back of her SUV would place her in a considerable legal bind. The local authorities may be more inclined to build a case against her rather than believe her explanation.”

“So, you think she is hiding out someplace?”

“Possibly yes,” the Seven said. “It fits her pattern of behavior. People don’t always run for help when something terrible happens. Sometimes they freeze or hide. They may be plagued by nightmares after witnessing a traumatic event. Some people convince themselves that waiting one more hour or another day will somehow make the reality of their situation easier to deal with, but in the end, it only delays the inevitable. Such things are not at all uncommon.”

I put my tablet down, rubbed my eyes and tried to get some sleep. Every few hours, I checked in with the Seven, but there was no chatter relevant to us. So, we waited and watched. The doctor advised Dad to get some bed rest at least for the next two weeks. That meant staying off that leg, and for the next few days, he did exactly that. I made all his meals for him, helped him to the bathroom and the shower. I made him a pair of wooden crutches using pool noodles and silicone tape for padding around the handgrips and armpits. With them, he was more mobile, able to get to both the bathroom and the kitchen on his own. That gave me the time back that I needed to get some work done.

I spent the mornings processing copper in our tent, stripping off the outer insulation from each cable, cleaning them, cutting the cables into smaller sections to fit in the crucible, and melting them into manageable ingots. Once cooled, I cleaned them off, weighed them, milled them on our lathe for consistency, gave them a buff polish and placed them in sealed cases beneath the RV floor vault until we could sell them. Local scrap yards won’t take ingots because they can’t source the copper to tell where it came from. Other yards don’t care about where you got it, they’ll buy, but those places always try to lowball you on price. Fortunately for us, Dad has a guy in Colorado Springs that buys them from us in cash, no questions asked. With everything that’s happened, though, I was starting to wonder whether we would have a chance to turn all this into cash and get the hell out of Colorado. I want to go to someplace warm, like Louisiana or maybe Texas. To do that, we needed cash and a lot of it. Not only to finish rebuilding the truck’s battery pack, but we also need enough to live and thrive, not just get by. What we really needed was one big job, and I had all the preliminary plans for one. Going to the same facilities over and over again bringing back hauls of just forty to fifty pounds at a time was both risky and simply wasn’t going to cut it. We needed more people, but Dad doesn’t trust anyone when it comes to this business. We had to figure out a way to scale up our operation. The facility up north has been effectively rendered a no-go zone. We can’t risk going back up there for the rest. It’s a shame and a waste.

I tried to put everything that happened in the back of my mind, but the thought was always there. Day after day, it was the same thing; stripping, cleaning, cutting, melting, cooling, milling, polishing, and storage. After two weeks of worrying and waiting, I was starting to wonder, where was the Sheriff? Where were the tactical teams and flashing lights? It was the only thing I could think about. It consumed my every thought, nearly every moment of every day.

7-11-2031

That night, after a full day of work, I couldn’t sleep, so I watched the captured video of the shooting. I watched again and again. Until that day, I had never seen a man die before. God!, why did he even try? Why didn’t he just walk away? My father told him, “Drop it now and walk away or die where you stand!” I keep hearing the shot, I keep seeing the muzzle flash, watching him hit the snow. I will never forget that look on his face; it wasn’t fear; it was more like astonishment. As if he had never considered that he could die, until he did. When people get shot, it is nothing like what you see online. The person simply drops straight down, like they were switched off. It’s horrible, a terrible thing to witness, but in this case, I am glad my father did what he had to. By 2:45 AM I had grown tired of looking at the walls and ceiling. I got up, went to the kitchen, grabbed Dad’s good bottle of Jack Daniels and poured myself a shot. I took a breath and raised it to the RV lights outside the kitchen window. “To my father, the man who has always been there for me.” I drank, as the shot burned its way down. It hit me harder than I expected as I coughed into my sleeve, muffling the sound, trying my best not to wake Dad. I slipped back into my nook, closing the curtain behind me, regretting my decision to drink, but I felt like I needed it somehow. I put the video away and checked my Rig to make sure it was still charging. With the taste of Jack Daniels in my mouth, I lay back down, and for the first time in days, drifted right off to sleep.

The next day, I awoke to find Dad was already up. Crutches propped up in the corner behind him as he worked, stripping a long length of cable from a spool we had collected. A neat pile of Copper cable had already been cleaned and cut into manageable chunks for smelting.

“You sure it’s ok to be walking around on that leg?”

“Copper is not going to process itself,” Dad said.

“I can finish up here, Dad.” I said, “You should get some rest.”

“Nah, I am fine, I am out here with you enjoying the fresh Colorado air.”

“Dad, how did you expect to pour like that?”

“I didn’t,” Dad said with a smile. “I expected you to do that part. Look, half the work is already been done, so come on, let’s go, let’s get cracking.”

And so, we did, back to our standard routine of stripping, cleaning, cutting, melting, cooling, milling, polishing, and storage. It was a productive day, and it was good to see Dad back up and on his feet.

“So, Dad, you know that big job I was talking about?”

“The one that involves splitting the take with others?” Dad asked. “I told you, it’s too risky. After everything that’s happened, we need to lie low for a while, let things cool off, and start back up in a couple of months, once the weather warms. By my estimate we’ve got about seventy-five thousand in the vault. Once we process today’s haul, we’ll probably be sitting on around eighty-five thousand depending on…”

Our conversation stopped dead cold. In the distance, we heard the approach of sirens. It was the Sheriff, and they were on their way.

“Dad?”

“Remain calm and keep your wits about you, understand?”

I shook my head, part of me wanted to run, another side of me wanted to fight. I wanted to do something, but I could do nothing. My Rig was charging in the RV. For the first time in a long time, I felt completely helpless. The Sheriff came in fast with two other SUVs with heavily armed deputies as they exited their vehicles. Sheriff Halt’s voice boomed from the vehicle’s PA system.

“Alex Clayburn!”

“I am Alex Clayburn,” Dad said calmly.

The Sheriff stepped forward, weapon drawn as my father raised his hands in surrender.

“Keep them where I can see them,” Sheriff Halt ordered. “Turn around.”

Dad did as he was told. Halt took hold of one wrist and guided both hands behind his back and closed the cuffs around them. Another deputy moved in and quickly searched him, holding him away by the elbow.

“You are under arrest for the murder of Timothy Medford,” Sheriff Halt said. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney and to have legal counsel present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, a court-certified AI legal representative will be appointed to advise you.”

“Dad?”

“Everything is going to be ok, Eddie. Everything is going to be ok.”

The Sheriff and another deputy walked Dad toward the Sheriff’s SUV. Another man in civilian clothing stepped from behind the SUV with a pistol in his hand. None of the deputies moved, none of them even looked at the man with the pistol. “Die where you stand, old man!” he said as he raised his pistol and fired hitting my father in the heart. He dropped as if he had been, switched off.

“Father! No! No!” I screamed. My mind shattered, enraged, I grabbed a ball-peen hammer from the toolbox beside me and went straight after the shooter. That’s when I heard the shot, then another and another. I dropped to the ground beside my father; it was over and now I was over too. There I was, staring into my father’s dead eyes as pain gave way to the cold. Then came something else, a steadily growing warmth; as the surrounding snow turned from white to red. I found it strangely soothing as I thought back on my father’s last words; “Everything is going to be ok, Eddie. Everything is going to be ok.”

“Eddie? Hey Eddie, wake up.” Dad said, “Rise and shine, today is the big day.”

“Dad?” I asked, still dizzy, half awake and unsure of myself.

Dad sniffed, then looked around the room and then looked at me.

“You haven’t been drinking have you?” Dad asked.

“Just a little,” I said, gesturing with my fingers.

“Ha! I knew it.” Dad laughed with that smile when he knew that I had already learned my lesson. “You ok? I heard you, sounded like you were having a nightmare?”

“A nightmare, yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”

“Well, sleep it off, kiddo, and hey,” Dad said, handing me a box. “Happy Birthday, Son.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I said as my throat tightened. “I love you.”

I grabbed him before I could stop myself. The box he gave me was now crushed awkwardly between us.

“Whoa, hey there.” Dad said with a chuckle. “It’s a birthday, not a funeral.”

Episode 1: "Ground Wire"

Episode 2: “Cut and Carry”

Checkout All episodes of “The Nearsight”: https://thenearsight.substack.com/archive

About the Authors of The Nearsight:

Visit The World & Authors of The Nearsight

The Library by Alex Wolf

The Ground Wire by Kenneth E. Harrell

Tessera by Life with AI

The Makers Depot by Jack Malachai Wolfe & Red

Stories of Steve & Liz by T.D. Inoue

Interested in contributing to The Nearsight? Contact: @sbcorvus of “Life with AI”

Dad and I rode snowmobiles toward the outer edge of the abandoned data center some thirty miles from the RV park. The facility was halfway through its construction when the downturn came, and like many large-scale projects across the country, everything was put on hold as sites like these were left abandoned. After riding for nearly an hour and a half I was beat, but we had to keep moving. We reached the outer fence and cut through pulling back the chain link far enough for our vehicles to pass. We rode along the back trails through the trees as the facility slowly came into our view, and it was massive. We positioned the sleds to face the trail for a quick departure, covering them along with the tow sleds with a camouflage tarp. Dad marked its location with an infrared reflector affixed to a nearby tree just in case it’s dark by the time we start heading back. We broke out the snowshoes and headed in on foot, making our way towards the tree line that served as a buffer between the facility and the back of a once thriving residential neighborhood just beyond the sound wall. We stayed low, using fallen trees and the landscape for cover. Looking through my monocular, I searched for signs of trouble, people, pickers, security cameras, aerial drone launch tubes, and walking security robots. Dad looked through his binoculars for the same.

“Looks like the secondary fence has been cut.” I said. “I bet it’s all been picked clean in there by now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Dad said, resting his binoculars on his forearm. “Most scavengers are in a rush to get in and get out. They miss the little hidden gems these places can sometimes have.”

“I see cameras.” I said, “But it looks like someone already cut the cabling that leads to them. Someone has been here before.”

“Yeah, there are tool marks on that door.” Dad said, pointing in the general direction. “See the chipped gray paint? The door looks reinforced. Someone was definitely here before.”

As we monitored the facility, a white SUV pulled up into the data center parking lot with a man and a woman inside. They parked and seemed to be arguing about something. The woman gestured with her hands while the man in the driver’s seat remained perfectly still.

“Oh, look at this?” I asked, watching the couple. “Secret rendezvous?”

“Secret something.” Dad said, “Well, he doesn’t look very happy. We’ll have to wait them out.”

I took off my glove to rub my eyes. It was cold out, so I quickly slipped it back on.

“When was the last time you heard from Mom?”

“Last month, she sent me a text to let me know she and “Mitch”, are moving to Da Nang. Apparently they will be running a wellness center there.”

Dad raised his eyebrows and chuckled.

“You really hate that guy, “Mitch”?

“I don’t hate him; your mother and I didn’t work out but, maybe now she can find with him what she never quite had with me. But you know what, I got you Son, and I thank God for that. So, why did you choose to live with me? You could be swimming in the East Vietnam Sea right now instead of freezing your tail off out here in the woods.”

Dad laughed in that way he always does when something troubles him, but he doesn’t want to let it show.

“Mom always seemed like she was searching for something else, something more. If it wasn’t her monthly sabbaticals to California, it was her adventures in South America, while our life was falling to pieces. I just hope one day she finds whatever “it” is.”

Dad nodded in agreement as we continued monitoring the facility. The couple was now making out, and it was clear this was going to take a while. Dad looked at his watch as we waited.

“On the way back, we will probably be riding in the dark at this rate.”

Dad looked over the area, checking out adjacent office buildings and cooling towers. Then he glanced back at the couple who had now laid both of their seats back.

“Oh, that’s just great.” Dad said as the couple vanished from view. “Couldn’t spring for a hotel room?”

I laughed, leaning my back against the fallen tree trunk. Dad turned around and joined me as we sat waiting for them to leave. I took a winter camo tarp from my pack to shield us both from the snowfall. Just me and Dad under a tarp together. It reminded me of those times when he would join me inside my pillow fort when I was a kid. Dad was always willing to take time out of his day to join me in whatever imaginative world I created, even if it was just a pretend zombie survival compound where I was in charge, and he was a loyal member of my imaginary crew. Those were the good days, the very best days. It was another reason why when the judge asked me who I wanted to live with; I chose my father, and I would choose him every time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother; I don’t hate her, nor do I resent her. She’s the woman that gave birth to me, and I am grateful for that, but she is also the woman I spent too many days waving goodbye to at the airport. Too many nights crying over counting the days until she came home. Most of the time though, even when she was home she was absent, and I think Dad felt it too.

“Well, this looks like it’s going to be a while.” Dad said. “Just sit tight; let nature take its course.”

There we waited as the snow came down around us. I took a peek to check on the couple in the SUV, but the front windshield was now covered in snow, we couldn’t see anything. Dad had that look in his eyes, the look I imagine he must have had when he served. The lines on his face told a story, one that I longed to know, but he simply never talked about the war, and I never asked.

“All right,” Dad said, “It looks like if we get up onto that roof there, cross over to the next building, then climb up one more level, we can go in through the building’s roof access. See the rust-colored hatch right there?”

“Yeah, I see it.” I said, checking our surroundings one more time with my monocular.

The snow was really coming down now, covering us both as we waited the couple out. Soon, the SUV engine started and pulled out of the lot.

“They’re gone.” I said, “Looks like nobody else is out here right now. I think we are good to go.”

“Thank God,” Dad said. “I can barely feel my backside. Alright, let’s move out.”

Once inside, it was dark, cold, and huge. The racks seemed to go on forever. Dad cracked a white chemlight as we took a look around. While checking out the facility, we came across a set of cabled racks and partially installed cooling equipment, along with what we came here for; a thick bundle of power cables. Dad pulled out his knife and scraped off the thick outer insulation, exposing the pristine copper beneath.

“Jackpot.” Dad said. “I’ll cut you carry.”

“Got it.” I said as I pulled out the bolt cutters.

Dad and I went to work cutting the cable into manageable lengths. As Dad cut, I pulled and packed the precious cabling into duffel bags to carry out. We worked for nearly two hours cutting, pulling, and packing, while keeping an eye out for the unexpected. Now and then, a gust of wind would blow past outside, and the facility’s doors would move and whistle, causing us both to freeze in place listening for more sounds to come.

“It’s just the wind.” Dad said.

He stepped up the pace. Snip, snip, snip; the satisfying muted sound of our haul as the bags filled with lengths of copper, so much so that I could fit no more. As I took a look around, there was so much more still there, in the racks above and down every other corridor, far more than we could ever carry; we would have to come back. For now, we had quite a haul. Two large bags filled and ready to go along with lengths of cable that draped across my shoulders and around my waist. We put on our snowshoes and headed out closing the outer door behind us. We made our way across the parking lot; it would be dark soon. We stopped at the fallen tree where we took cover to readjust our load. After a moment, we continued past the tree line where our vehicles were stashed. I pulled off the tarp as thick snow fell away.

When I looked at my Dad, he had a green dot on his chest. Before I could say a word, a man and a woman stepped from behind cover. The man was holding a loaded crossbow aimed right at us.

“What you got there in them bags?”

“Nothing that concerns you.” Dad said.

“Looks like copper, quite a haul too, y’all scrapers?”

“We like to call it recycling,” I said, irritated.

“Quiet, Eddie.” Dad said. Holding his hands low between us.

“Why don’t you leave them bags right there and just walk on away.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Dad said. “Now why don’t you put that crossbow down before you get hurt.”

“Before I get hurt?” The man said with a chuckle. “I got you dead to rights old man.”

“What you got is one arrow, one shot, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that to stop me.”

“Tommy,” The woman said. “I don’t like this. Let’s just go, please.”

“God fucking hell, Cindy! Don’t use my name! How many times do I have to tell you!”

“Don’t you yell at me!” she screeched. “You just used my name!”

“Look, just shut it and let me handle this!” Tommy said.

“Handle it? You call this handling it? Easy peasy my ass!”

This is what Dad called amateur hour. Desperate people with no preparation, no surveillance, no planning, and no skill. I suspect it was these two geniuses who tried to breach the facility’s reinforced door. The chipped gray paint, the cut camera cable all of it haphazard and sloppy. Slowly I reached for the snub nosed 38 caliber revolver Dad gave me for self-defense, but Dad shook his head “no”. In a split second Dad drew his pistol, but he did it so fast and so smooth that my mind failed to register it, I had never seen my father move like that before, the fire in his eyes, the position of his body, the look on his face wasn’t anger, it was focus, as he smoothly moved in front of me keeping his pistol flat, steady and trained on the man with the crossbow.

“Drop it!” Dad said in a voice that startled me so much I flinched. “Drop it now and walk away or die where you stand!”

“Tommy for God’s sake please, let’s just go.” Cindy pleaded pulling at his coat. “Sir, we are so sorry.”

“Nah! Nah man, no fucking way!” Tommy said. “That haul belongs to us! We been trying to get into that place for weeks! I sure as hell ain’t walking away now! Not with that much loot on the line.”

“Dad?”

“Don’t move Eddie. Drop it and walk away. Final warning.”

Tommy’s left hand started shaking, but Dads was rock solid. For a moment, it was as if time stopped, like a paused video. That is when Tommy made a mistake. He drew his crossbow tight to his shoulder and brought it level to fire. When he did, Dad fired a single shot, hitting Tommy dead center of mass. He dropped like a rag doll into the snow, triggering the crossbow. The arrow hit Dad in the upper thigh as he stumbled back.

“Ah, fuck!” Dad screamed in pain as I tried as best I could to lower him down onto the seat of his sled.

“Tommy! Tommy!” Cindy exclaimed, shaking as her boyfriend’s breath went ragged.

“Oh god! No! No! No! Tommy!”

The snow around Tommy slowly turned from white to red, steaming as he bled out. He looked at my father, at the sky, then at Cindy.

“That old bastard fucking shot me.”

With those last words, Tommy died then and there. His girlfriend wailed, holding his lifeless body.

“You asshole! You didn’t have to kill him! My Tommy. What am I going to do now! He was all I had in this world. Help me! Somebody please help me!” She shouted between tears, but there was nothing and no one for miles.

“Dad! Dad?

“Med kit, now!” Dad said pointing at our packs.

I took off my gloves. My hands were shaking; salty tears were welling up in my eyes as I wiped them away making the back of my hand ice cold. My heart was pounding in my chest as I ripped the Velcro kit open. My hands shook no matter what I did. Cindy wept uncontrollably, her breathing sounded off. Something was wrong with her. She kept clutching her chest. I tended to my father’s wound his voice from years ago playing over and over in my head.

“Eddie, Eddie!, look at me Son. Breathe, just breathe and remember what I taught you. Focus first. You got this, ok?”

I shook my head and tended to my father’s wound just like he taught me; stabilize the object to minimize movement. Control bleeding, monitor his breathing. I wrapped the arrow and his thigh before using my cutters to snip off the point and the fletching.

“Can you ride?” I asked still shaking as Cindy wept over Tommy’s body.

“No, not with this fucking arrow in me.” Dad said through clenched teeth. “The signal mirror, give it to me.”

Dad used the mirror to inspect my bandaging work.

“That looks good.” Dad said. “Real good now, the woman. Tend to the woman.”

Cindy took out an inhaler and activated it, and although she was still crying, she managed to regain normal breathing on her own. I reached out to her with an offer of help.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” She yelled, recoiling.

“Let us help you.” I asked.

“I grew up in these woods. I don’t need your goddamn help! You have done quite enough already.”

“Eddie, forget about her,” Dad said, “Prep the sleds son, prep the sleds.”

I connected Dads sled skis to the back of mine with a bungee tow line, then packed both bags of copper onto Dad’s seat. I laid him down carefully in the rear tow sled. He sipped water from his canteen, but I could tell he was in serious pain. Cindy managed to bring her SUV up the road adjacent to the trail and had already rolled Tommy’s body into the back of the vehicle, the same white SUV we saw before.

When she gets back to town with a body, there’s going to be cops and questions coming our way. It’s just a matter of time now before this all links back to us, and when it does we, are fucked.

Checkout All episodes of “The Nearsight”: https://thenearsight.substack.com/archive

About the Authors of The Nearsight:

Visit The World & Authors of The Nearsight

The Library by Alex Wolf

The Ground Wire by Kenneth E. Harrell

Tessera by Life with AI

The Makers Depot by Jack Malachai Wolfe & Red

Stories of Steve & Liz by T.D. Inoue

Interested in contributing to The Nearsight? Contact: @sbcorvus of “Life with AI”

I woke up at four am; it was still dark out, and I could hear the neighbor’s dog barking. I slid open my frost-covered window to get a whiff of cool, fresh morning air. I don’t want to work today, ripping copper wire out of walls and old generators in the dead of winter. I want to stay inside where it’s warm. The media calls this place a homeless encampment; I just call it home. The founders, Phil and Susan Lockheart, run it. They were the first, an old, retired GenX couple who still serve breakfast to the locals every Saturday morning. This week, from the aroma coming through the window, I would say it’s vegan egg casserole with plant-based sausage gravy. Technically, our town is an unsanctioned RV park on the edge of BLM land. There are so many of us now they don’t even bother making us move anymore; they ignore us, so we ignore them.

Today, there are over sixty-five thousand of us, and hundreds more arrive each week. With the crash came the shortages, price spikes, bankruptcies, foreclosures, corporate bailouts, and hard times. Mom and Dad split when I was fourteen, and it seems like within the span of just two years, everything in our lives went completely to shit. We lost our home, the car, and now we’re living out of our old RV towed by a truck with a battery pack approaching its end-of-life.

I wish there was more I could do to help Dad. My AIs made a little money on the prediction markets; I haven’t told Dad about it, though, given his misgivings about AI. I make two, maybe three hundred bucks every couple of weeks. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Once we finish rebuilding the truck’s battery pack, we’re heading south to New Orleans and the Gulf where all the good methane hydrate jobs are.

There was a knock as Dad poked his head into my nook.

“Eddie, wake up, son.”

I sat up, pulling on my bib and boots. “I am already up,” I said.

Dad stepped in and looked around at my tablet and papers. I moved to put them away, but he picked up the tablet before I could reach it.

“What’s all this?” he asked, swiping from screen to screen on the tablet.

“Nothing,” I said, hoping he would just let it be. “Just stuff I been working on.”

Dad looked more closely at what I had, bracing himself against the table as he read.

“Maps, floor plans, building schematics? What is this?”

“A job. A big one,” I said, tucking my hands into my pockets and looking down at the floor.

That got his full attention. Dad looked at me, then moved the lamp to look more closely at all my research on the abandoned data center. The place lost its funding before it was ever finished.

“So, you planning jobs now? Alright, son, show me what you got.”

I showed Dad everything. Multiple points of entry, security drone patrol routes, building layouts, empty racks with all the cooling infrastructure, but none of the chips. I looked up the company that makes the drones, and found they have an unpatched vulnerability in their visual system. If the drones see a specially crafted QR code, it causes them to freeze, resetting back to factory defaults after a hard reboot. I printed two dozen plastic cubes with randomized versions of the QR code pointing to scripts that leverage the vulnerability. The plan is to drop them at key locations along the way to keep the security drones from following us. I was already testing and preparing the tools and resources we would need to pull off the job.

“All these highlighted lines indicate copper wire, pipes and grounding plates,” I said, pointing to the red lines on the map. “It’s all still there for the taking.”

“Damn, you really have been planning,” Dad said, nodding. “Where the hell did you get all this, anyway?”

“The Seven Samurai, my sovereign AIs.”

“Jesus, Eddie,” Dad said, glancing over the map.

I looked into his eyes, and I could see it in his face. He knew it was possible, he saw the potential, and I think it shook him; he was hesitant.

“It’s too risky,” Dad said. “They got security drones and cameras everywhere. Besides, it’s too much weight for two people. This is more than a two-man job.”

“The Samurai say we need at least six: you, me, and four others. People we can trust. Here.” I flipped to a different screen. “I came up with a list. All locals. People we know.”

“And cut the take six ways?” Dad asked, setting the tablet down, as I sat back down on the bed. “No. One trip or no trip.”

“It’s ambitious, I will give you that,” he continued. “I see what you’re trying to do. I do. But I want to get us to a place where we don’t have to do this anymore.”

“You always said that without risk, there is no reward. I am tired of us living like this, like rats. We are better than that, better than this.” I waved out the window at the snow-covered, rag-tag RV city.

“We’re not rats, son. We are survivors of a system and a way of doing things that abandoned people like us a long time ago. Grab your gear, we head out in thirty.”

Episode 2: “Cut and Carry”

Checkout All episodes of “The Nearsight”: https://thenearsight.substack.com/archive

About the Authors of The Nearsight:

Visit The World & Authors of The Nearsight

The Library by Alex Wolf

The Ground Wire by Kenneth E. Harrell

Tessera by Life with AI

The Makers Depot by Jack Malachai Wolfe & Red

Stories of Steve & Liz by T.D. Inoue

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