As Sunset awoke, she found herself on a couch with less pain in her foot than before, but the thing that got her the most was where she was: Not in a shack, but rather on a somewhat-uncomfortable couch with a blanket draped over her.
Did yesterday really happen? she thought as she woke up.
The smell of coffee and Chinese takeout permeated the air, as well as the sounds of rapid typing.
"What… time is it?"
"Sunset's up," Chloe said.
"Still not finished with the laptop!" Sasha said.
Sunset saw the redhead walk over to her and sit down on the coffee table, "Hey, dude. You doing okay?"
"Yeah," Sunset replied, "Better than I was last night."
"That's good to hear," Chloe said, "What happened to your phone? We didn't find it last night."
"Roselyn stole it."
"Roselyn Griffon?"
"Yup," Sunset said, "That's the one."
"She's a cunt," Chloe said, "A full-on putz."
"With a criminal record," Sasha said, heading to the couch with a laptop case, "Might wanna avoid her, as well as those five girls that turned into a rainbow laser at the fall formal."
"You two went to that?"
"Mostly to see our handywork," Chloe said.
"And alcoholic punch," Sasha said, "We do not play delicate."
"You two?" Sunset said, sitting up and turning around, "The fall formal?"
Sasha and Chloe glanced at each other and exchanged a sly grin.
"What's about to go down?" Sunset said.
"We'll tear the heads off of a few people for you," Sasha said.
"Wait, what!?"
"We come from the Eastern Seaboard," Chloe explained, "We didn't have the cushy lifestyle you guys in Oregon. Besides, neither of us have any real family to speak of, apart from Nyx."
"Shit," Sunset said.
"Also," Sasha said, "I found your laptop. Couldn't do any major data recovery, hell even the OS was mostly kerput with malware and trackers from a decade ago."
"I was pretty careless before."
"You were using Windows XP," he said, "On a laptop with an AMD Sempron."
"I wanted something that worked."
"Well, you've got us now," Chloe said, "Sasha bought a batch of surplus laptops a few years ago. They're all HP, so they're pretty decent. He's been trying to fix one for you all night."
"You coming to school with me in the Plymouth?" Sasha said.
"You don't build a Kawasaki W250 from scrapbin parts to let it sit around," Chloe said, putting her leather jacket on, "But I'll be there later. You have that keylogger I made?"
"Its with your stuff," Sasha said, "I wasn't sure if you wanted to leave the fork prongs for outlet prongs or what."
"I built the thing from a Chevy key fob and parts we had laying around here."
Sasha grabbed a book bag and emptied it onto the floor, "Anything you want me to take, put in here."
"Wait," Sunset said, looking at the cream-colored retro motorcycle in the room, "You built that from scraps?"
"More or less," Chloe said, "Motorcycle goes bad because of a blown gasket, take it to the junkyard. Fuel manifold goes out, junkyard. Clutch give out, junkyard. Basically, any small-engine motorcycle goes out, nobody wants to pay to have it fixed unless they're vested in it. So, for cheap transportation, I go to the scrapyard, find about three or four of them, pay the guy a hundred or so bucks, and make a working one," she opened the garage door, put on a helmet and bookbag, and mounted the bike, "See ya later!"
"Where's she going?" Sunset said as Sasha opened the back of his car and put Chloe's things in it.
"Likely going to pick up some new controllers for the electrical system," Sasha said, "We've been stealing electricity for a few months because the payment was all in cash and got misplaced."
"You're accepting me, even through all of what I did and what's going on now?"
"Yeah," Sasha said, opening a hidden messenger on his phone, "We don't think you did it."
"You're serious?"
"Absolutely," Sasha said, tapping a line with seemingly-gibberish characters and sent a message.
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"Everything okay?" Sunset asked.
"Yup," Sasha said, "This may be hard to hear, but you're coming to school with me and Chloe today."
"I- what?"
"In order to catch Anon-a-miss, I need you in the library."
"Why me?"
"For starters, nobody suspects us because Chloe and I haven't ever really cared about the shit that goes on there. Hell, we barely gave your Queen Bitch days any priority after you started. Plus a few people spied on us some and saw that what we were doing was not a social media blog. You, on the other hand, have a reputation for destroying relationships. Lucky for you, our area in the library is a second-level area, basically a hideaway from the teachers. Very few students know about it, and Luna is the only staff member that knows about it. To everyone else, it's a rumor that a crackhead thought up after getting too high. Nobody will bother you at all."
"You're sure?"
"A hundred percent certain."
As Sasha went back to check on Sunset's new laptop and phone, Sunset couldn't help but feel suspicious. She'd had friends through force, then lost them. She'd had friends through redemption, then lost them. Now, she had friends through… pity? And was, likely, soon to lose them. Something was up, she could feel it.
"Here you are," Sasha said, coming back with a new laptop case that looked packed, "ProBook laptop, page-size tablet, new phone, and portable power outlet," he said, handing her the bag, "Now, the SIM card is just the one from your old phone, but I've blocked all of the others from getting to you and cloaked your devices. The head of the NSA couldn't find you. The only people that can track you are me, Chloe, and our tech buddy."
"I- I don't know what to say."
"Enjoy it. That laptop has twelve gigs of RAM, two terrabyte SSD, an i5 with vPro, WiFi, Bluetooth, a fresh battery, ultra-secure VPN, and is faster than anything you could've had before. Now, I went ahead and threw a copy of Linux on there with Mate, but I've mitigated the learning curve as much as possible by making the UI resemble Windows 5.1 on your old laptop."
"How long does the battery last?"
"Eight to ten hours if you're not crazy."
Sunset had to catch her breath, "Is it brand new‽"
"No. It's a 2012 model, those things are dirt cheap. Schools in SoCal bought them up like hotcakes during the preorder period, but then swapped to Google Chrome OS within a year. Chloe and I went down there in the Plymouth, bought a couple of boxes of them. I think we ended up with like twenty or so laptops? I'm not entirely sure, but we pooled our money together, I hacked a bank, and I sell computers on eBay for like three hundred bucks each. She has her own mechanic racket going on, so there's that."
"Wow," Sunset said, unsure of how to react.
"You're pretty safe," Sasha said, "Just trust me."
"I… don't know how to feel about this."
"Do you know Geek Code?" Sasha said, loading up the car.
"I don't think so," Sunset said.
"You go change clothes, you can use anything from either bin upstairs, and when you come back, I'll show you my main one. Okay?"
"Alright," Sunset said, going upstairs and finding a bedroom-like area in the loft of the warehouse, as was a sleeping vampire that made her blood run cold and caused her to let out a terrified scream.
The vampire responded by turning over and pulling the blanket up on her body.
"What?" Sunset said, finally realizing there wasn't any danger around the bloodsucker.
"For the record, it was the motorcycle that woke me up," the creature said, "Just get dressed so I can get back to sleep."
"Uh, okay?" Sunset said, getting a red shirt and pants from Sasha's clothes and a denim jacket before heading to the downstairs bathroom to change clothes and going back over to Sasha.
"Alright," Sasha said, opening a document on his phone, "Consider this to be 'Geek Genius 101'. Your Geek Code is your resume online. It's how you introduce yourself. They're all pretty long, but the syntax is about as complicated as the early days of HyperText Markup."
GCM/CS/CC/IT/MC/S/SS/ d- s+: a- C+++$ UL++++ P+(++) L++++ !E W++(+++) N !o !K w- !O M-(-) !V PS PE Y++ PGP(++) !t !5 !X !R tv- b DI(+) D++(+++) G+++ e- h(++) r y-
"What does that mean?" Sunset said, "Why would you use that?"
"I'm a geek in computer management and science, communications and mass communications, information technology, and science and social science. I dress in a shirt and jeans, I'm a little taller than most, I'm 15-19 years old, I haven't been away from my computer for class in weeks, plus I make money at it. I'm the sysadmin at my UNIX of choice, Linux. Depending on the situation, my knowledge of Perl is anywhere from knowing about it to writing scripts in it. I'm the Linux wizard, and don't care for Emacs. I surf the web daily, have my own homepage, and am the Webmaster on occasion. I've read Google Groups or USENET once, but don't bother with the Web Oracles and avoid Kibo. Windows, to me, is a joke, I don't use OS/2 and I don't think I plan on it. Mac, I range from Macs Suck to the people who use them aren't as smart as the fuzz in my navel at the end of the day. Generally, I'm on the fuzz end. I don't use VMS, and I vary wildly on anything Sociopolitical or economic politics, depending on the circumstance. I think that 1984 is actually a form of prophecy, for lack of better wording, and I don't watch Star Trek, Babylon 5, or The X-Files. I don't roleplay and I turn the TV on when there's a disaster or storm, I watch most of my stuff on VHS and DVDs. I vary wildly on my opinion of books, and I read Dilbert occasionally, sometimes everyday if nothing's going on. Doom, I play occasionally sometimes and download game files, but I can also be found playing it daily, again when everything's slow. As you know, I've pretty much memorized the Geek Code, haven't finished high school, and sometimes we have a few people hanging out over here, sometimes it's a tech cave with fast food and pizza boxes everywhere. I date periodically, Chloe, but we don't have sex. Partially because we're underage, but also because it's messy."
"Wait, your entire personality is in a single line of code?"
"Pretty much, though the only people who can read it are people smarter than bellybutton lint… pretty much, that takes your former 'friends' off of the list. Chloe and I generally use ours as signatures in email and message boards in the community. I hide mine in code that I write to verify its authenticity. Basically, it's your resumé to smart people."
"Mind if I study it?"
"I can send you PDFs of the books, they're not very long, or I've got a library of them around here if you prefer hard copies."
"Send them to me at the school."
"Alright," Sasha said, "Anything else you wanna bring to work on?"
"Nah," Sunset said, "I think this is enough."
"Alright," Sasha said, "I also threw in a composition notebook as well with something to write with. Trust me, when you start getting into it, you're gonna thank me."
"Any plans for a disguise?"
"Way ahead of you," Sasha said, getting a hat and aviator-style sunglasses from inside the ottoman, "Wear this and stuff your hair in your clothes."
Sunset put on the disguise as she and Sasha got into his car.
"You gonna shut the garage door?" Sunset asked as the decades-old Chrysler engine roared to life.
"Nyx wanted it left open when we went to school," Sasha said, "Everything's fine, trust me."
With that, Sunset held onto a shred of hope that today would be better than yesterday.