The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.
SeaQuest
Abstract
Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down.
This story takes place before season 1, in the months before the SeaQuest is commissioned out to sea in the period when Lucas was ordered by his father to join the ship without any care for his opinion or general welfare.
This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several mini-crossovers in the form of cameos and snapshots with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the casts of MacGyver (2016), NCIS and Bones will make large appearances. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and other multi-varied organizations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.
Unlike my other story, "Justice for Lucas", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.
PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.
WARNING; the language level of this one will be almost mild instead of the usual street-trashy when we consider a story based on boats and sailors. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?
{ SQ } - { WARNING } - { SQ }
I have never been a lawyer or notary nor did I work in any paralegal or police job in my life; please don't take my storytelling as being 'legally binding' or valid in a court setting. Laws change, get added brand new or even get revoked (marijuana, anyone?) every year and the application does vary according to the policemen or crown attorneys you are dealing with and the 'political context' of the day in Parliament. Since I took my very basic knowledge of knife, gun, weaponry and self-defense laws on Wikipedia and official Government of Canada websites relating to the subjects, you should try to find professional sources for a genuine advice.
Furthermore;
it's a historical truism that rich people with high contacts have SOME things easier but when it blows up it destroys their entire family. Poor people seemingly avoid the biggies but get stuck with every little hurdle since they can't afford decent legal advice. It's also a sad, disgusting fact of life in 2017 that there is still a lot of discrimination in daily life and being an English-speaking white man with blond hair and blue eyes will open you doors that will forever remain closed for others.
I do not support this reality, but it is the current reality in North America and I have to use the societal norms and culture in vigor to make the background of the story credible.
WHAT IF LUCAS SAID 'NO'?
THIRD CHAPTER; OH, CANADA!
Getting the cold shoulder (and everything else, too!)
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 05:52am
VIA Rail train, coach class
Southern British Columbia, Canada
Lucas yawned widely behind his hand then frowned at the hoarfrost lining the outside of the lower rim of the window besides his seat. Even wrapped in two layers of clothing plus his trenchcoat as a blanket, he still felt some of the cold seeping through the metal body of the train wagon despite its insulation and heating systems. Coughing forcibly to clear his throat and wake himself more, the boy blinked both eyes to clear the crud and refocus his bleary gaze on the shapes of the furniture and passengers inside the poorly lit interior of the vehicle. As they were just minutes before dawn, the train car was mostly wreathed in shadows and obscure forms, an occasional weak blue light at floor level offering just enough sight to walk without tripping or stepping on an item fallen off a sleeping passenger.
The teenager worked his jaw to undo a bit of a titch in the left side as he pivoted his neck side-to-side to get rid of a kink that seemed to enjoy his vertebra too much for his taste. Once he was fully awake, he reached for his cane and tapped it on the floor, shaking off his coat as he rose unsteadily on weak, barely responsive legs. Deciding to get himself some breakfast to have something to hold until the real meal after the train arrived in Vancouver, he checked all the security wires and locks that kept his carry-on and briefcase attached to their storage places. Once done, he began his slow trudge towards the salon car and the public bathrooms so he could relieve himself and splash some hot water on his hands and face to complete his wakefulness. A hot breakfast and coffee would be nice to keep him fed while he worked on his laptop for an hour or two before going back to sleep. Given the very public, very exposed situation at his reserved seat, he could not work on anything too sensitive like the strategic plans for Wise Apothecary & Chemists or his European shell corporations. He could however finish dealing with the little stinking cur that spoofed him and hampered his hack on WPP and Lawrence's plans for the ill-fated demise of his – poor – son (Eh eh eh, ironic that...).
Hobbling slowly on the way, the adolescent made his pit stop at the restroom then went to the common salon room where he was not impressed by the type of service offered. He had expected it and seen the photos on the company website but it was not even comparable to the Amtrak 5-star experience. The food was prepared and served at a kiosk similar to the food court of a shopping mall or school cafeteria, meaning there was a glass counter with hot and cold sections holding the basic elements to make either sandwiches, salads or become side dishes for the daily special. The à-la-carte selection was very limited with only about 20 options that were not based on the pre-made fillings. The drinks choices were similarly limited, mostly a few coffees, teas and hot chocolate from an automated brewer along a chiller containing individual cans of fruit juice or soft drinks. You took a tray and ordered with the clerk who assembled your choice and took payment then you walked to one of the salon's tables or went back to your assigned seat in your wagon if your meal was easy to move and eat without a tabletop to hold items in place.
Lucas was well inured to the realities of working and eating simultaneously since the last fourteen years of his life had been lived under somewhat of a time-crunch given just how hard-packed his study-work-living schedule had been. Then again, he had achieved to receive multiple bachelors, masteries and doctorates during his short hard life so it had been time well managed after all. Speaking in his normal soft firm tones with the clerk, he asked for a morning club sandwich with spicy potatoes and caesar salad, two oat & raisin muffins, a large bowl of fruit salad and extra-large cappuccino, all packed in cartons and plastic for take-away.
After a short wait of not even fifteen minutes, Lucas had his warm meal packed in a plastic bag so he could bring it back to his carriage. A few minutes more and he was sitting in his plush seat with his laptop on the table near him to start filtering his messages and watch his preferred news sites while he ate his ordinary but nourishing meal. The basic egg, bacon & cheese sandwich hit the spot real well, with the spicy potatoes giving his mouth just enough savoriness to keep him awake and active until the next bout of sleepiness arrived in about an hour. The small caesar salad added some creamy greenery to his sandwich that was a bit on the bare side of things. That was the downside of coffee kiosk meals; they were usually bare-bones and the costs of extras would end up more expensive than a full meal in a regular deli or other full-service sit-down establishment.
After a short half-hour devoted to chewing through his sandwich, salad and some coffee, the teen stacked the used cartons on the end of the table and set aside towards the window the muffins and fruit salad as a snack for later. Now switching gears from watching the news for recreation over to his expert analytics and hacking apps, he got serious about business. Once all the surveillance and reprogramming tools were active, Lucas moved the suspect video file into a custom-built 'secured' media player that he had conceived. The application allowed to play safely virulated films or those files that were malware or spyware packaged and formatted to appear as regular videos to sneak past the normal detection and quarantine systems most companies used.
Taking out another small wire from his aluminum briefcase, the teen connected it to the front of the portable workstation then unspooled it, revealing a small rectangular controller and, further down the wire, a pair of small plastic earbuds that fit deeply inside the ear canals. Turning the laptop towards the window at 25 degrees to avoid somebody in the aisle seeing what he suspected would be a very graphic and threatening movie, he also cut all external sounds and dimmed the image luminosity by 25% to avoid garnering attention at this early hour of the day. Practically every other passenger was still deeply asleep, no need to wake them. The waiter had already removed his empty cartons and offered a coffee refill from the fresh brewed silex pots he had been carrying towards the service area at the front of the carriage at the time.
Now ensconced back under his trenchcoat and fully warm again, especially his legs, Lucas swallowed an extra strong Advil gelule for arthritis pains with some lukewarm cappuccino to ward off possible cramps. Once fully comfortable and prepared, he clicked the app to start the movie and analyze its invisible contents while the image played out.
The small recording only lasted about 78 seconds before it faded over to a black screen with bold green text spelling out a website address (URL) in the Dark Web where the victim of the scam was to access a phantom 'client page' to make a coin payment of 100$ USD every week or else be subjected to the 'negative consequences' that were promised in the menial, low quality video.
Lucas was gripping the armrests of his seat hard enough that he was developing painful cramps in his fingers and palms from the strain. This little jerkwad should have been cleaned off the floor of the cheap motel where he was inconveniently dropped on before he managed to develop mobility and language skills. Abstinence, birth control and abortion were really undervalued as methods to ensure the quality of the human gene pool; someone should put out public health advisory notices about it. Now it would be Lucas that did the housekeeping chore of wiping him off the face of reality since nobody was conscientious enough to do it before now.
It needs to be known that Lucas had always reviled and despised rape and all sexual crimes from early in his childhood; especially against victims that clearly can't defend themselves like children, the very elderly or those cripples suffering reduced autonomy. As such, the teenager had always supported the use of deathly means (capital execution) to resolve permanently the cases of such criminals instead of wasting millions to keep them alive uselessly in prison. This was even more important when considering the especially high rates of recidivism upon release or the risks of violently escaping jail to keep on going through a life of crime. Therefore, the sick twisted little spoofer's scheme to wave around fake accusations of pedophilia and child exploitation made Lucas especially sick to his stomach and viscerally angry at the back-alley strutting slut of a cur.
The short video was straightforward in its conception and amateurish execution. It opened on a black painted badly lit room, very small and tightly packed, with only the table holding the CPU and the ordinary student's swivel chair visible in the image frame. Then, from off-camera to the side, came the bitchy little error of Nature. A young child, around 12 years old at most, pale white skin, pale blue eyes and dirty blond hair cut preppie-style short all over except for an idiotically long cowlick of dense stringy strands that hung down to his chin on the left side of his face, covering almost the entire side up to his nose.
At the beginning of the film, the kid was dressed in very tight, slutty-style shredded black jeans and a closed button-up flannel shirt in a generic tone of dark blue. As the film ran, the kid quickly unbuttoned his flannel shirt and dropped it to the chair in what was a poor imitation of a peepshow dancer's supposedly sensual movements, revealing underneath a worn drab gray T-shirt with slashes that had seen better days. Then the kid unzipped his torn jeans and dropped them to his knees but didn't actually take them off, revealing tight lycra boxer-briefs in lurid tones of highlighter yellow with traffic-light green details and seam stitching around the 'stuffed' pouch in the front. Lucas had done enough studies of medicine and anatomical development (he was a full DP & MD) that he knew damn well that a child this age would NEVER have genital organs big enough to fill those skinny shorts like THAT! For pity's sake, the kid's balls hadn't dropped out yet, as evidenced by his prepubescent voice, but he was gyrating and thrusting forward his pelvis with OBVIOUSLY packed shorts in an effort to attract attention to the crotch area. The boy spoke few words, almost all at the end in the last 30 seconds before the film faded to the black coordinates poster.
As he was gyrating his hips and pelvis-thrusting next to the chair, the whorish child grabbed a full handed hold on his 'stuffed' crotch and giggled himself at the camera while throwing back and leftwards his head in a spastic-thrice movement that looked like either a nervous tick or a snobbish affected mannerism to move that imbecilic curtain of hair out of his left eye. "Hundred dollars!" the boy's reedy, unbroken, whiny voice sounded out. "I wan'na hundred dollars every week from now on! And you better pay it, man! Cuz I know if you don't!" The boy giggled himself again as he threatened. "I know you looked! I know you wanted it! Well man, that's pervert stuff! It's gonna cost you, faggot! Hundred buck a week till I say so!" The kid then pulled up his jeans roughly and bragged like a stupid little ho'e stain in da hood at his would-be victim. "Cops'll wan'na know aaall about yo! They will! So you won't talk about me! You won't tell your bosses that the network's mine! You don't want the coppers to know what you've been doing with me online! You be paying, won't you! Hundred dollars a week! Every Friday!" The child finished his threat by grabbing again at his crotch over his zipped jeans and closed off "Yo mine, biaatch! Yo mine cuz I own yo ass! REMEBER that I know you and where you work! You know what the pigs in jail do to perverts that hurt poor innocent little kiddies like me, don't you, pervert? So pay or the cops and jail!" Then the film ended to the URL and date for the first payment to pass.
In the background, where only the true pros could see, the film was running a spyware that tried repeatedly to determine the hardware & software portrait of the machine it was in and grab any user profile data it could to shunt through the unseen phantom Internex channel it was trying to establish to report a new victim to its creator. That was how the child would know that he had a 'fish' on the line to 'reel in' or else risk being discovered and stopped. Not to mention his list of victims could then be taken from him and used by others without giving him any profits or kickbacks at all.
While there were no doubts a few true pedophiles grabbed in his trap, Lucas thought it would be accidental. The emplacement of the trap told the teenager who was both an expert cyberneticist and certified psychiatric neurologist that the child was looking to entrap wealthy, high-status men, not just pedophiles and child exploiters. No, he was targeting specifically an area roamed by rich men who would prefer to pay a hundred bucks a week out of their brandy & cigar money than let out in public their little sideline of using illicitly the back-channels of the network to do – things – their bosses and families should be kept away from.
Still, the child was using the threat of publicly accusing these men of one of the most depraved crimes in human society just to mooch off some paltry pittances regardless of how ruinous those accusations would be, even if the men were eventually proven innocent in court. The way society was run nowadays, there were circles of armed vigilantes trawling the web, using free social media platforms to establish communities that 'watched and policed' their geographic locality's 'human trash' outside the bounds of law or normal police. Several beating resulting in disfigurement, handicapping and deaths occurred every year since about 2000 when a series of rapists were released after serving ultra-short sentences in complete isolation that were termed by the public and community activists as "time out in a kiddie camp". Popular anger coupled with loose municipal surveillance in a country that has 400,000,000 guns in circulations was not a recipe for peaceful civilian life, even in the rural areas.
Lucas was seeing red at the thought of this useless, gormless little parasite running this sort of scam for just a grubby few dollars a week, no doubt to pay himself candy, junk snacks, McDonald's by the ton and cheap booze, cigarettes and joints by paying an older teen to get it for him. The psychological profile of this type of behavior was neither complex nor unknown; it was hardly the first time that a smarmy little fucktard of this type was caught and debriefed by the cops or the broadcasting watchdogs. Making a decision based on that raw seething anger, Lucas decided to not bother identifying the little miscreant, even though he had everything needed to scour the social media platforms to find his face, then his home and family. At this point in life, it was absolutely useless to bother any further with the debased low-born sub-being.
Sneering in visceral contempt at the memory of the menial error of genetics in the film, the adolescent rapidly decrypted the very basic spyware running in the background and deftly hijacked the cheap, off-the-torrents code that was about the same age and capacity as the trap-app had been. Snort! Maybe the twit had gotten a package deal? "Buy trap, get monitoring virus included! 29,99$; all sales final, no refund, coin by transfer only." the teen whispered to himself in nasty sarcasm as he worked the keyboard of his portable workstation until he had the desired result accomplished.
Smiling in satisfaction, Lucas recompiled the code of the heavily edited spyware then pulled the file from the quarantine dumpster and set it in his ports/channels/connections & traffic management application. A few more clicks had the 'pirated' illegal program connected and happily sending to its unknowing childish master the coordinates of a new rich old man to con out of a few dollars. Let's see what the bratty cock-shaker would do about this one!
The new victim's user profile data report would lead the whiny little spoofer from WPP's server backdoor and all the way to the doorstep of the OTHER childish blond moppet of everyone's nightmares for the last four years. But maybe not four more if this long-shot gambit panned out...
Lucas smiled a nasty wide smirk at the thought of the juvenile nitwit trying to extort Donald J Trump through the not very well known Air Force 1 presidential servers of Internex, telephony and military comms as if it were just another anonymous desktop CPU in a company office of some easy-to-con middle-aged pothead.
"Ah, good times for all!" the young genius preened sarcastically with a shit-eating grin. That would teach the debased little bastard to entrap people with such a dirty, destructive accusation. After his own painful and shameful experience two years ago, Lucas was not in any mood to be merciful or forgiving towards the dastardly little parasite. He was exploiting a very grave, hard to live problem and making life exponentially harder for all those that did live it and tried to bring forth complaints against the attackers, just to get rebuffed by an uncaring, disinterested society.
Not anymore.
The damned little defective retard would learn not to make such accusations lightly, and he would no longer waste the time and efforts of others with his inept, ineffectual, attempts at damaging the cybernetic fiefdom of other, more capable users. Whatever punishments befell him when the Secret Services investigated him was his own fault and his own merit. If you live by crime, you have to expect and accept the violence, backstabbing, betrayals and double-crossing of that life.
Now that his last real 'not-Lawrence generated' problem was finished, the teenager yawned widely and scratched at a few itches around his right knee joint. Emitting a long sigh, he whelmed some courage and set to closing, folding shut and packing away securely all of his gear and personal effects back in his briefcase before ensconcing himself deeply in the reclined seat for another long period of sleep. Hopefully, he would be able to unconsciously ignore the waking passengers' activities and slumber through the morning until the scheduled arrival in Vancouver passed lunch time.
Cold greetings from our hosts
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 13:11pm
Pacific Central Station; Via Rail train, parked
Vancouver City, BC, Canada
The sounds of the train were annoying him to no ends as he roused from the darkness of sleep. Scrunching his face in disapproval, the teenager shook his head to move his Fedora upwards away from his eyes so he could see around without leaving the cozy warm mound created by his trenchcoat. Following his predictions, he had experienced a very simple, restful morning spent in sleep sitting in the thickly padded coach seat after cleaning out his network access problems. He had slept until just now, when the disembarking bell had sounded quite rudely. Looking at the sunlight streaming in the windows, the noisy people chatting and bustling around without a care in the world other than dressing up and finding their carry-ons, the boy grumbled quite unamicably as he tried to untangle from his coat to stand up and begin the process of disembarking.
A quick check at his mechanical wristwatch confirmed that the long, heavy vehicle had indeed done good time all along the night and morning, arriving only some six minutes passed the hour on the schedule. Now, all Lucas had to do was get off, find his trunk and lug it all the way to an appropriate car service to reach his chosen hotel at long last.
As the youth started the painful three-legged trudge towards the exit point and the baggage car, he mumbled to himself about the crushing crowd and feel of claustrophobia that was threatening him. Hopefully, getting his trunk would not be too long so he could leave quickly. As luck would have it, he was able to find and obtain his trunk in less than a quarter hour. Finding the parking lot and taxi stand was easy but he needed a more spacious vehicle after getting stuck in a cramped coach seat for almost 12 hours.
His legs had badly healed from his last physical encounter with Lawrence two years ago since he had gotten only partial treatments. As long as he wasn't at least 20 years old, his body would not be done maturing so any truly permanent treatments would just have to be redone every year and spending 2 weeks in hospital with a month of physiotherapy afterwards over the next four years did not appeal to him. His damaged legs were functional but not fully repaired, just patched up enough to be autonomous and walk around; so now they were giving him angry signals that they would not support him for long.
Setting himself aside from the foot traffic by sitting on a wooden bench in the middle of the concourse, he rifled through his carry-on for the bottle of Advil gelules and the metallic thermal bottle of mineral water he always carried for such recurring situations. After taking his pill, he opened a small leather pack similar to his toiletry kit to pull out two dermal osmosis patches laced with topical clinical strength analgesic ointment. He quickly and aptly lifted his pants' sleeves and applied the patches on the lower part of the legs then covering them with the socks to keep them protected.
After medicating himself, the adolescent unlocked his heavy wheeled trunk, searching for his custom-built armament cane that would support his weight and make him feel secure much better. The cheap ordinary cane he had been using got stored into the trunk as a back-up in case he lost the main tool. With a deep sigh of sadness as he thought of his dreary lonely birthday coming in 7 days, Lucas took out the solid steel device and elongated it to it's full height, then tested the solidity of the assembly. The weapon was the product of his imagination and milled in his Stanford workshop's CNC by his own hands. It had seen violent use many times already in just the six months he had used it.
{ SQ } - { Hatchet Cane } - { SQ }
The armament cane Lucas normally walked around with when he felt unsteady from reactions to his meds or cramps in the legs was built out of four pieces of solid milled steel. It had a pistol-grip/hatchet for a handle, with a main barrel, then a secondary telescopic shank to adjust height up to 45" tall and finally the manual folding survival blade.
The pommel was based on the classic cane 'pistol-grip' model but with two modifications; the short knob in front had been elongated and enlarged to become a hammer head with a 2 inch circular flat face whilst the longer horizontal part of the grip was flattened, elongated and arced until it formed a ribbon-style blade for a thin woodsman's hatchet that ended with a lower pointed 'beard' to act as a tree hook. The pommel was usually completely covered by a thick transparent vinyl sleeve to avoid accidents with the sharp ax blade and allow Lucas to hold the cane bare handed without slipping from a sweaty, shaking hand when he got really sick from his treatments or medications.
The main barrel was a tempered steel pipe 24" long that had the pommel screwed solidly on top and the secondary shank slid inside the lower aperture in a piston-type action. The telescopic movement was locked simply by a pair of standard manual spring-pin locks placed on opposing sides of the shank. The holes for the pins were only in the last 12 inches of the main barrel, just like normal canes for the sick and elderly.
The secondary shank was made of a solid tempered steel rod 24" long (4" stay inside upper barrel) with a two-sided spring-pin mechanism at the top and the slot for the blade at the bottom. At the lower end were the blade pivot, the slitted 1" tall rubber foot that protects the cane from wear and the sliding screw-ring that served to lock the blade in its closed/open position.
The survival blade had 12" usable length ( plus 2" tang/pivot), 1½" wide by ¼" thick tempered steel slat with a symmetrical profile. It was completely flat, sharpened smooth on one edge and serrated as a saw on the reverse with a triangular point for stabbing through thick clothing if need be. It was set in an inert – unassisted – pivot; you had to unscrew the safety ring and slide it up to let the blade fall open then push the ring down all the way to screw it around the pivot joint to keep the blade in workable position. Since the blade created a hunting spear when open, it could be seen as 'dangerous' however, since it just dangled uselessly if not ring-locked as it didn't 'click' like a traditional hunter's flicker knife would, it could pass police test as 'too weak and too slow for angry reflex attacks'.
{ SQ } - { Musings on Canadian Weaponry Laws } - { SQ }
With the hatchet-cane was a folded Canadian government form, albeit a dubious one, given to Lucas by a pair of the train station's customs inspectors when he boarded the train in Seattle, following a short interview conducted aboard the coach car as result of the check-in baggage inspection. It was a 'TEMPORARY {non-firearm} weapon ownership & carrying permit' for 30 days only. The Canadian Federal Police (RCMP) would get a digital copy and check in on him promptly within the next 5 days, maybe less in fact. The form spelled out that his cane was 'clearly a combat weapon' that Lucas 'clearly intended' it for usage in 'prepared self-defense' in case he was 'out of reach' of police protection.
Peace, Order and Good Government; those were the fundamental values in Canada, in that order.
True to the culture and legal practices of the very peaceful northern country, it wasn't the type, style or size of the weapon that determined why they allowed Lucas - a foreign, minor child - to carry it through the border in his trunk instead of confiscating it on the spot as would usually happen. Some people even got arrested routinely at the border crossing if they insisted or tried to lie about weapons in their luggage, some as small as Swiss army knives or crafts blades. Lucas had wisely preempted trouble by giving the rail line company and customs officers a notarized written declaration about his cane and why he had it to explain it wasn't contraband or criminally intended.
You could THEORETICALLY walk around Canada with a knife, machete or ax as long as:
It was carried openly, not hidden; back-packs and trunks were iffy legally
If inside a carrier; you actively declare it before they find it or 'else'
It was carried safely, as in 'not easy to steal from you'
It was not meant to intimidate but only as a tool of survival / work implement
It was not carried with the desire to cause harm or to 'trouble public peace'
Amusingly, by Canada's written laws, Lucas' cane blade didn't count as 'concealed' as it was carried in plain view and the vinyl cover on the main handle was transparent thus removing many hurdles and accusations of preparing a crime. Besides, the cane was an overly big, cumbersome, slow to maneuver into action crutch; not something somebody could pull from a pocket or sleeve in a fit of rage and fast-attack with like a jackknife or box cutter so it was seen as 'a bit' less dangerous. Go figure...?
And YES; Canadian criminal code laws in general make a far greater case of the 'intended / actual usage' of any item rather than its design/nature since they had planned and written their laws to avoid the querulous nit-pickers who would say "It's not in the list of prohibited items, so it's legal to use" even if they held the bloodied item in hand when the cops came in. Because of such cases going through the courts, the laws were crafted with a voluntary level of vagueness and flexibility favorable towards the police and prosecutors; this of course puts a burden of proof on the accused instead.
Canada does have several types of non-gun weapons fully banned though and no excuse would get you out of trouble. Any spring-loaded jackknife, balisong (butterfly) blades; ANY blade hidden inside an innocuous object like the infamous 'comb-knife' where the teeth serve as sheath for the blade and ALL versions of the punch-blade (fist knife) called 'constant companion'. ALL brass knuckles, pin-rings, spiked wristbands - and implicitly - ANYTHING not listed but related to ambushing a victim or doing a subterfuge attack with the goal of knocking out the person to facilitate kidnapping. Shuriken in all forms are illegal and so are most weapons that damage primarily by being thrown. Many non-edged weapons like the nunchaku, flail / morning star and spring loaded telescopic baton are reputed illegal unless they are used in a gym, martial arts competition or historical recreation scene.
Firearms laws covered ALL guns including flare guns, starter pistols, and ALL electrical weapons like Taser pistols are treated as "Prohibited Firearm" and sooo illegal for civilians... Air-pressure mechanical systems (paintball gun) and traditional mouth-held blowguns were treated under firearms laws if taken to court for charges, just like all bows and crossbows.
Basically, the laws were written that it's the police that decide if it's a 'tool' or if it's 'forbidden' at the moment of encounter according to your personal circumstances at the time. Therefore, anything you hold in your possession can be declared a 'prohibited weapon' and be subjected to charges of 'criminal usage of item' according to whatever perceptions, leanings or deficits of training the police officers doing the investigation bring to the situation. This of course means that the usual problems of education, politeness, manners, and calm demeanor (or lack of them) from all involved will greatly influence the outcome of the decision.
Lucas being naturally mild-mannered, a jewish boy who looked 'very white', from a good, rich family with a superbly high education, in medicine no less, and his own many companies with several offices and hundreds of workers meant that he would normally get better reactions from police than let's say... A socially isolated teen boy with black skin from a poor family who dropped out of secondary school and had no job or home at the moment.
Situation-based negotiable legality is a damned bitch...
This peril-frought encounter could then escalate into the domain of arrest, charges and going to the ministry of Justice, thus going into the dreaded 'SYSTEM'. This put you in the hands of the limited perceptions & philosophical leanings of the crown attorneys who will be more or less invested in making the charges 'stick' in court. Their efforts will be decided depending on the directives given by the elected government in post. Conservatives like imprisoning teenagers and sending them to 'boot camp' prisons while Liberals prefer to hand out fines to fill up the state coffers.
In an elected government, "JUSTICE" and "LEGAL" don't always mean the same thing for everyone.
At which point, the application of the weapons laws will be subjected to the leanings of the magistrate in charge of the case but in a very discrete manner since 'politicking' from the bench is much frowned upon in Canadian legal tradition. Blatant exploitation of the bench for personal gain or vengeance by European judges in the middle ages and Renaissance had caused massive suffering for the citizens and several revolts; something the people of Canada remembered. In consequence, they established laws specially targeted at forbidding activism or proselytism from the bench. Remember: the judges in Canada are not elected, they are nominated by the ministers of Justice; therefore any type of overt act that goes against the "principle of judicial self-restraint", like expressions of political, religious, sexist or ageist bigotries are immediate cause for appeal that could lower the sentence or even completely undo the case due to unprofessional misconduct.
Take note; PROVING that either the cops, prosecutors or seated judge have been any less than professional is a backbreaking chore with low chances of success. Misconduct amongst the judicial in Canada does exist, like everywhere, but it is 'relatively' rare because the proceedings are usually open to the public. The trials are recorded for public archives and ALL legal cases become accessible to the law faculties of the universities the moment they are closed. Hiding bad decisions or influence from personal bias is HARD for judges and social action groups are actively sifting through each and every search & seizure, investigation, prosecution and sentence handed down for hints of bad policing, abusive prosecution or overly severe judging.
{ SQ } - { Musings on bigots } - { SQ }
Lucas shook his head despondently, reorienting his thoughts elsewhere than which laws applied and whether his permit would be finalized to his needs. What really had him steamed at the moment was something different altogether. The private contractors used as customs agents by the Seattle train station had not exactly let Lucas pass into the train with the steel cane in his trunk out of the kindness of their hearts. They had thought he had valid reasons to carry it, given that Lucas had happily (not really; no...) given them copies of his medical files, all notarized by the detectives, prosecutors, DCFS and insurance adjuster working his attempted rape case and the beating given by Lawrence. He had gone the extra mile and given them his refugee status claim forms along the dual-citizenship request and the investor immigrant application forms, all original reproductions from his lawyer's office.
Between the multiple judicial documents and verifying his long eventful history with the Silicon Valley police department and DCFS, the train line's customs agents concluded "the kid would be more helpful to polite, honest society" with the ax-cane in hand rather than without. What really got the boy's heart to stop cold was the flippant comments he heard the rent-a-cops say about him as they left the car about him being "a heroic fighter against bitch-ho'e droppings".
The bastards were closeted white nationalists who thought he would repeat his 'exploits' if left alone.
It was just their bad luck that the teenager had the nasty habit since coming to Stanford of keeping a button-camera in his shirt collar, connected by a hidden wire to a specialized burn-phone in a sewn pocket at the rear of the shirt. Lucas had physically changed the chipset for a custom one that only sends out, doesn't receive, to five separate private 'ghost' servers. Anything said in 10 feet around his person was recorded and if you were in font of him, you got filmed in color; it was all sent to data farms out of country to be used later. It had helped the young man at several occasions where people had tried to pass service contracts and then reneged on paying him his dues. In other cases, it had helped him claim self-defense against juvenile thugs around Stanford Town in the years he had lived there. A small child with a laptop was a target for thieves and vandals; hitting back when he was attacked could be hazardous if there were no witnesses, so filming was the alternative.
Those bigoted guards would not enjoy the report he was going to file against them.
And Lucas did not at all appreciate being called a hero, like some sort of crusading follower of the KKK strolling around the streets looking for people to harm. He had the misfortune in the past year to use that cane 5 times to save someone's life, but always at the cost of other lives. It just happened by the worst of all bad luck that the attackers had been black, latino or Indian-Sikh. Not a single white perpetrator and, according to the off-handed remarks of the bigoted, white male, anglo-saxonic cops; that was "just how Nature worked with these people."
Now you knew WHY the teen's sleep-time was not getting any better
Hence why he, a mere fifteen year old boy, had hired a shrink of his own free will.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
Near 13:40pm, the boy was finally rested enough to function, and sufficiently armed, to endure a long walk on rough snowy ground if he had to go outside the station. Lucas gripped the cane pommel with both hands to hoist himself up, feeling stronger and more stable just by the comforting presence of hard steel in his cold shaking hand. The oral ibuprofen and epidermal cortisone certainly helped with that state of affairs too. He took up again his slow walk around the train station's outer perimeter until he saw three different car rental company kiosks clustered together, but none what he wanted. Shrugging, he simply asked one of the rental agents if the type of luxury car service he wanted was offered by someone other than the regular taxis out in the parking lot. Getting a bigger car with better leg room and more helpful driver to reach the hotel was a must now that both his legs were reacting badly to the colder climate and he was having the preliminary tremors that indicated bad muscle cramps to come shortly if he didn't warm up fast despite the patches he had applied.
His good fortune held as he was guided to a larger kiosk towards the station's VIP passengers' lounge, something that, in hindsight, he should have guessed. It only took ten minutes before he was seated comfortably on a plush chair in front of the limousine rental agency, massaging his legs as he was booking his one-way trip to the hotel. The young man in his thirties that was the kiosk clerk didn't even bat an eye at seeing the corporate credit card or the age of the company owner. With Lucas' passport, Blue Cross insurance number and driver's license as backup ID, the reservation went smoothly. The teen could even just walk outside to the car as the agency had three in stand-by in the lot at all times that the US train came in. The Via arrival from Seattle always occasioned a bump in requests for luxury conveyance around town, especially during the holidays, so the agency never took any chances to be without a car at hand the moment the client asked. Since Lucas didn't need a specific model or something fancy, just leg room and warmth for the trip, he was in for fast service.
The kiosk agent had him wait inside the station besides the rental desk where it was warm so the driver could come pick him up and drag the heavy luggage for him. It would also avoid mistakes of identity or lack of manners from the driver if he was presented the client at the desk. Not that the clerk would ever say that out loud, but better be safe than sorry. Since Lucas was well seated and his legs were in fact starting to warm up a bit, the adolescent decided that waiting inside wasn't a bad idea. There is of course no way that the complimentary cappuccino offered by the clerk had anything to do with his decision-making process. It was the two vanilla biscotti served with the coffee that did that.
The driver came in, dressed in the classic black 3-piece suit with black cap and white gloves, covered by a deep gray trenchcoat. The kiosk agent introduced the teenager as the client to drive around as well as the destination. The chauffeur knew about the Daleminton hotel complex across the water over the Lions Gate Bridge in Park Royal District in the north-western sector of the town. It was in a patch of wild greenery just on the upper side of Marine Drive, right after crossing the Capilano River. In fact, it sat at the beginning of the "Capilano Pacific Trail" for amateur hikers and mountain bikers right on the shores of the river. The chauffeur had driven people over there many times since he worked for the company. It was a well known, well appreciated hotel that had many repeat clients. It had a well deserved reputation for high-class service and amenities that wouldn't let down the young client. Unfortunately, it would be almost 90 minutes to reach in normal times; now in winter with the holiday rush traffic in full swing, it could take up to 2 hours or worse if there was a traffic jam on a major road or spontaneous snowstorm.
Considering this, Lucas asked the driver if he knew a good restaurant in the area between the station and hotel so he could stop to eat and walk around a bit to exercise his aching legs. He hadn't eaten anything since around 06:00am other than the courtesy coffee he had just finished off so he needed a solid meal quickly enough to avoid getting a migraine. Moving a bit should keep the cramps from manifesting fully; at least that's what his physiotherapist used to tell him. The driver and rental agent gave a few suggestions of diverse culinary styles that had the boy thinking about what he felt like eating. Giving in to his desire for some sightseeing, he asked to be driven an hour away to a large skyscraper called the Harbour Center on West Hastings Street near the Gastown District that held a shopping mall with the usual food court and boutiques. It's most iconic landmark however was the revolving restaurant on it's top floor that offered superb panoramic views of the town as it pivoted.
Now safely across the borderlines, Lucas thought he could allow himself to buy a few personal items and extra clothing since he would not have to lug it around that long. Also, his hotel was less than 25 minutes by car from the Royal Park shopping mall plus all the smaller boutiques of the Northern zones of Vancouver Harbour. Crossing waterways, inlets, creeks and small lakes would be a nice change from the arid, semi-desertic climate of Silicon Valley. Satisfied with the services offered to date, the teen confirmed his acceptance of the terms and signed the final form to establish a client account with the company for repeat service during his stay in town. Since he would be getting many medical treatments soon, he would not be able to drive, even when his birthday passed, so having the corporate account set up already would earn him better service and priority over walk-in newbies if they lacked enough cars to serve everyone in his area.
As they walked to the parking lot, the driver explained to Lucas that along with driving the car and giving touristic infos, he also served as porter for the baggage and escort to make certain merchants would not dismiss him due to his age. He was not however a bodyguard; he would call the police if trouble was encountered. Lucas approved wholeheartedly as he declared himself "Allergic to trouble", despite his long, painful history that he never spoke about unless it was necessary.
The car itself was bland looking which the adolescent didn't really care about as he had never been a car geek. As long as it rolled and carried him safely to destination, he couldn't really care. The 2010 black Cadillac short limousine for six passengers was just big enough to grant luxurious leg room without calling undue attention to himself in the streets as they drove around Vancouver. Lucas kept the partition shutter opened as he wasn't on the phone or asleep and he needed to speak with another 'safe' human being after so much isolation in the last few years. For someone as sociable as him, Stanford's juvenile thugs, thieves and vandals had insured that his university years had not been such a happy time in his life.
The first leg of the trip was as slow as anticipated. Going from the Pacific Station to the restaurant meant traversing the Downtown District of the city in Thursday afternoon rush traffic just eight days from the biggest holidays of the year. They were "lucky to not stall in the line", so the driver said with a shrug and easy smile as he spoke of the usual patterns of the city. His client didn't mind, seeming to drink in every word while memorizing the information for later travels inside the bustling town.
The chauffeur left the train station on a northern direction by Station Street, then went left to join Main Street northwards until he could turn west at Hastings Street, the road that the desired shopping mall was located on. It was a very long boulevard that crossed several districts and it was packed with enough traffic and pedestrians all along the length of it in a manner that reminded Lucas of the busiest streets of San Francisco or Silicon Valley, except it was covered in white stuff from winter's gifts. Lucas truly enjoyed the view of the Yuletide decorations all around as they drove along the populous commercial boulevard until they reached the massive skyscraper & shopping mall located just passed the limit of the Gastown District.
The driver circled the edifice until he could find a lucky spot as another car was leaving; he didn't want to go into an underground garage since his passenger had specified he wanted to sight-see a bit before reaching his hotel. Once out of the car, the older man showed his client the outer windows of the restaurant he had chosen, all the way at the top of the building. The teenager was only partially impressed by the edifice: one steel and glass tower was pretty much the same, no matter where you were in North America. The youth was much more interested in learning that the Canadian Passport Office was located on West Hastings Street just a few blocks up from the building which was important as he would have a lot to do over there in the coming weeks.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 15:21pm
Vancouver city; Harbour Center Tower & mall
A short ten minute walk from the car had the pair inside the shopping section of the 28 storey tower, strolling around leisurely in search of a restaurant less famous than the one on top since it happened that you needed reservations to have a seat. Calling just on the cusp of Thursday dinner rush was not going to get them a table and food was now a critical necessity for the teen. He had eaten the two small muffins and tepid fruit salad from the train's salon kiosk at around 10:30am when he woke up for a short trip to the toilet. That was now very far behind him and he could feel that even the limousine rental agent's coffee and cookies would not let him hold out until supper. Thankfully, shopping centers like these always have three or four full-service establishments besides the coffee shops and food court kiosks.
Lucas and his driver spoke in quiet tones as they walked to the public entrance, navigating the Christmas rush crowds that were annoying due to the teen's limited mobility. The security guard at the entrance of the mall was looking over the people as they walked by, his eyes scanning the pedestrian flow in quick superficial moves. He looked towards Lucas, seeing his high-class clothes and the cane he leaned on to walk then saw the escorting uniformed driver so he promptly switched targets to follow instead the progress of a group of boisterous high school students carrying many large deep shopping bags in which items could 'accidentally' drop from shelves. The driver saw the guard's movements but said nothing; there had been no interactions with his client so no harm to decry.
A quick look over a conveniently placed mall map right at the public entrance gave them their quarry inside of 60 seconds. It was located on the second mezzanine overlooking the cavernous empty interior of the mall, giving an incredibly clear view of the milling crowds. A slow paced march with rides up two mechanical escalators had them almost in reach of their goal as it was practically right next to the landing of the moving staircase.
The majordomo at the restaurant doorway gave a single look at the teen's clothes and uniformed driver before he promptly put in place his usual polite smile for good clients. The young male looked sick and tired with a paleness to his features that didn't give an indication he'd be causing trouble unlike a lot of spoiled brats that ate in the restaurant with their rich parents. He also seemed to carry himself with a sober, quiet sort of dignity that made the elderly majordomo take notice of his attitude that was much more polite than was normal for the age group. Thus positively impressed, he had the usher quickly at hand so the pair was escorted to the requested booth in the windows facing towards the mall's vast, multi-level concourse. The waiter was already present with a tray carrying menus, water pitcher and glasses before they had even taken off their trench coats.
The 4-star service was quick and efficient, despite the abnormal crowds. Christmas season was clearly in full swing by now, or gift shopping for the family parties was, at any rate. Lucas was well aware through his research on the society and politics of his new country of residence that they were far less religious than the average US city and also far less likely to make a public mess about it. That gave him hope that he could live at peace without some God-nut always trying to steal his company or convert him by force in order to 'save his lost soul'. He wasn't lost you twits; he was migrating to a new country and had pretty much found where he wanted to be at, thank you so very much.
The restaurant's menu had a mix of European classics with some Canadian specialties done in a Haute Cuisine style to merit the establishment's rating. Even the Host's Table wasn't cheap since they were essentially in the beating heart of Vancouver's Downtown core and the middle of the financial sector of the city. Everything in the shops they had seen was mostly mid-class to luxury-class items or services with proportional pricing. Given some of the people he did business with since he was 9 years old through his many trust funds and companies as well as the places he had dined with his customers in Silicon Valley or Stanford, Lucas was not overly excited about the costs.
As was the basic normality for his situation as client, Lucas told the waiter to put both meals on a single receipt in the name of Wolenbahn Electronics, his corporation, and he would deduce the lot as business travel expenses in his taxes. Having the driver wait outside or eat elsewhere on his own money would be height of ill-cultured uncouthness to such level that Lucas would actually call it an act of 'vulgar disrespect' towards the hired employee. If you were rich and lived richly, that didn't give you the right to spit on others or wave your standing at them then leave them in the rain whilst you basked in your privilege inside the restaurant or shop. Lucas refused to even consider acting like that because he would hate being treated like that himself and, more than anything else, he remembered how his parents had both acted towards the staff in their houses and offices. He would NEVER act that way with his contractors, ever!
The meal was pleasant but above all else filling. That really had been a necessity as the teen could feel the first tendrils of a migraine trying to wrap around his brain to crush him with pain. Thankfully, he had his bottles of Gravol and Advil in the small traveler's kit that attached around his waist under his jacket. As a precaution, he took one of each and swallowed them with a mouthful of the excellent fresh-squeezed fruit juice that he had taken with his main course. The pair savored slowly their desserts and coffees as the younger man wanted to rest his aching trembling legs more, getting as much warmth inside his chest and legs as he could before going on the road again. The adolescent had realized some 15 minutes after taking the pills that the train voyage from Seattle in coach class had drained him far more than he expected compared to the sleeper-class experience. Speaking with the driver, he decided to visit just two or three shops for immediate necessities in case the hotel hadn't furnished the suite's fridge and cupboards with it already, then leave by the most direct route north.
{ SQ } - { More bang for your buck } - { SQ }
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 18:01pm
Vancouver city; Harbour Center Tower & mall
In the shopping mall, Lucas stopped by a pharmacy for some extra over-the-counter meds to deal with his migraines or muscle cramps in his legs and lower back that tended to act up at night. After getting that plus a few paper magazines and newspapers specific to Vancouver, they walked around a bit until they reached the only store in the mall that advertised as being 'thrifty'. The Dollorama store chain covered Canada widely and offered quite a few good things, including known canadian brands and imported european items. Lucas decided to walk around the aisles curiously as he hadn't seen much of use for him despite the rows of clothing, hygiene products, kitchen utensils, and even tools of all sorts for household renovation or car repairs. The rows of candies, chips and munchies were funny but well placed next to the real food, most of it canned, pickled or vacuum sealed for microwaving. The teenager asked the driver to get him a wheeled basket so he could pick up a few things, just in case.
After picking up a few dry snacks, candy bags and chocolate bars, mostly costing 1$ or 2$ each unit, the boy took a few microwave-ready instant meals in-a-cup at 2$ each in case he had a pressing craving or needed to eat with a pill he had just taken to avoid having acid reflux. As they were leaving the food aisle, the pair passed by the 'seasonal' zone that had the Christmas ornaments and all winter related thingies. Lucas suddenly stopped hard, startling the chauffeur who almost rammed into his back as he was following behind his client, pushing the cart. The teen had seen something that grabbed his attention bad enough that he pulled out his smartphone to take pictures of the entire display section of shelves and items. Looking around, he saw one of the merchandisers filling the shelves and baskets a bit further who had stopped his work to curiously watch the boy's activities.
Approaching the worker, Lucas asked politely "Can you get me the store manager, please? I have some questions to ask about store policies for some items on sale. Thanks." The teen then walked back to stand besides his basket and driver, a frown visible on his pale, thoughtful face.
It only took five minutes for the female manager to come speak with him. She was a bit older, around fiftyish, with brown skin and black hair common to the Persian nations. With a kind smile, she asked what the store could do for him, specifying that they still had some items in the back-store from the autumn seasonals that hadn't been shipped back to central warehouse yet. The boy pointed to one set of items placed loosely in the shelves, not under locked glass panels as he had expected.
"Excuse my ignorance, Madam, but I am new to the country and I'm trying to understand the laws about carrying sharp tools or weapons in public. I was told that things like that 5$ hatchet or that 3$ swiss-army type pocket knife were considered 'weapons' and shouldn't be sold openly or carried in public without a 'valid reason' in the eyes of the police. Why are they just lying there, in an open basket without locks or surveillance?" He asked completely out of sorts about the situation.
The woman's smile became wider as she chuckled at the young foreigner's questions. He was kind and polite with her, not arrogant or bullish like many tourists so she decided to take the time to answer him, especially in light of his driver and full basket behind him. A good client was a precious commodity and she didn't want him to go away with a bad impression of her chain's service.
"What you see here sir, is ordinary across most of Canada, even in the city areas." she spoke in Canadian-English with a pronounced Farsi accent. "We always have tools for yard work or camping, pretty much all year long, and some basic stuff like these could be seasonal needs too. We have more variety of choice in the spring and summer." The manager thought for a second about her explanation before putting it to words. "It's for the tourists you see. They come for the trails and the parks, for back-packing and camping in the easy weather. Since there is a lot of that going on in winter too, and some people have wood stoves that need chopping wood for all year long, we keep basic tools like these all the time."
The teen was frowning again, deep in thought. From his own perspective and experience, this was perfectly logical both for clients and for the store's marketing plan. It was the police and law enforcement side of things that had him thinking so hard while comparing his own cane and other defensive measures to what he saw. "Can you tell me then, why these 'tools' as you call them are not locked in a glass display case or just behind the counter? I was led to believe that anything 'pointed, sharp or threatening' would not be openly sold, especially to minor-aged people."
The woman openly laughed, shaking her head at his question. "Americans! You have a weird view of the world. It's true Canada's laws are much tighter than yours about guns and big combat knives but not that way. We can own and sell these things openly to anybody with money. There's no permit asked, just 5$ plus the sales taxes, so about 6,00$. And no, we are not obliged to deny purchase because of age, the laws don't oblige us that. When items cause questions like that, the people at the head office have lawyers look it over with the government before they even buy the stock. If there had been problems, it wouldn't be on the shelves that way."
Lucas blinked slowly both eyes in synch as he thought through the information, trusting in his button-camera to record everything as evidence when he would petition the RCMP for his concealed-carry permit for his cane and a few other things. "What about those knives, though?" asked the adolescent as he pointed to a 6" long fish filleting knife exposed on a hook inside a flimsy carton & plastic wrapper. Anybody could pry that open to steal it or worse, take it and pay 3$+tx at the cash register to walk away with it perfectly legally from what he was told. "How can you guarantee that it won't be purchased by a thug from a street gang or a kid that will intimidate other kids in a school yard?"
The woman shook her head in sympathy for the boy. She had finally given the thick heavy cane he leaned on a deeper look and saw the milled steel head under the transparent vinyl wrapper, it's hatchet blade and hammer face promising pain to any who attacked the child. And he WAS a child; she was a mother to three girls aged 14 to 9 so she could see just how young and frail he was under those pricey, bulky clothes. "You must come from a very violent neighborhood to think about things like that when you travel abroad. And to carry that with you... You were hurt badly, far ago, weren't you? You remind me of my brother Aslem and I, when we left Afghanistan forty years ago, during the Russian's war there. We saw things, we were hurt by people we thought were our own... But when war strikes, food and medicines are rare, people get desperate... They ignore neighbors, exploit family and even turn on their own."
Turning towards the innocuous display of flat shelves, racks and hooks, the mature woman made a wistful face at her memories, gazing into a far removed past she still tried to forget. "Canada is not perfect you will see." She spoke in whispered words. "But it will treat you kindly. The vast majority of its people will welcome you and help you. The hurts you suffered... The injuries that need still healing... Maybe even the things that lie in the dark at night, waiting for you to sleep so they can make you suffer in the dreams... You will find help here, in our cold forests of wood and steel." She finished in almost imperceptible tones, now morose at the conversation.
"I thank you for your time and kind words to me, good mother. May you and your home be blessed for this deed of kindness." Lucas answered in accented Farsi, one of the 20 plus tongues he spoke fluently.
The manager was surprised at the switch of language, smiling widely at him in thanks. With a nod she completed the information he had asked. "For what you say, kids will be kids and vandals will break things, no matter what you do. There are store that present the knives and axes in locked cases, yes, like the Canadian Tire, because their products are expensive or they fear lawsuits like in the US and Europe. People who have a hurt relative want justice, sometimes vengeance. They look for reason, for compensation for the pain or loss of life. So they find who sold the knife or gun and sue them. It's not logical because those things are not known when we sell them."
"So the law says we have to try and be reasonable. If we hear a pair of young teenaged boys having a bad argument in the concourse and then one comes in to get a hatchet or big knife like this or the butchering blades in the kitchen section, we would ask questions and maybe say no to him. It depends a lot. If a young kid of 11 or 10 years old comes in with some coins and a shopping list, it usually means his parents sent him for it, so we sell. The laws have... Flexibility, yes? That's the word. Flexibility and common sense in them. The rest is up to the police to figure out." She finished her speech, waiting for the boy to ask anything else.
With a shake of the head, Lucas signified he was done but picked up one exemplar of each item he thought litigious to place in his basket for purchase. They would serve as part of his physical proof when dealing with the police or the crown attorneys if it went that deep in the system. After completing the circuit around all the aisles, including a return to the kitchen utensils where he picked up some Betty Crocker branded butcher's knife for 3$ and a big heavy meat cleaver for 4$, the teen was done browsing the store and ready to walk out.
At the cash register, the manager was present, diligently counting a small stack of twenty dollar bills for the end-of-shift deposit. She smiled at the pair again and spoke to the cashier they were lined up for, making the young asian woman in her early twenties smile and laugh. The girl was pleasant with them and easily accepted to separate the basket's contents on two bills as the teen asked politely in Nihongo after seeing the small Japanese flag printed on her T-shirt. The manager behind the cashier looked up surprised at the boy speaking another complex language besides English and Farsi with such fluency that his accent was very slight. Without further holdups, the transactions were done quickly to the satisfaction of the young client. Lucas absolutely needed all the tools on one single ticket to keep for his records. That's also the reason he paid for the sharps with his debit card; he wanted an electronic trace to prove where he had bought the items. After that was done, they were able to walk out of the shopping mall and back to the car.
{ SQ } - { On the road of life } - { SQ }
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 18:58pm
Vancouver city; Harbour Center in the street
The road to the hotel was almost another hour ahead of them and it was passed time they got rolling if they wanted to get there at a reasonable time. As they reached the outside of the mall towards the parked car, the driver clicked the remote attached to his keychain to start the engine as he asked "Will you be going elsewhere or just the hotel, sir?"
"I will actually need to stay stationary for a short while. I have some things to search for on the web and then at least one phone call to make before I can schedule the rest of the day. If my call isn't what I want, then I might have to go back deeper into town for a couple of hours before going at the hotel for the night." the young passenger answered politely in his usual understated manner. Nodding, the chauffeur stayed silent until they reached the vehicle whence the man unlocked the car trunk to place the purchases for the rest of the trip while the boy took up his aluminum briefcase to bring inside the cabin with him.
Once well seated in the middle of the rear banquette, Lucas opened his case and took out his portable workstation with the cable kit to connect to the electrical and Internex ports of the car to boost the signal through the vehicle's built-in antennas. Setting up the cables properly was so easy the youth could do it with his eyes on something else if he needed to multi-task. Once everything was wired, he began the boot-up sequence then set the machine on the seat next to himself so he could take off his hat, scarf and loosen the heavy coat around his chest to permit easier breathing and movement.
The moment the CPU sounded it was ready to work, Lucas put it on his thighs, opening his messaging management suite and connecting to the diverse websites he planned to query about a few facts before going any further. Within minutes, he had processed through the batch of scrap emails and non-important but useful messages that could wait until the evening to be handled. The one message he wanted was there, arrived in the last hour only. The Vancouver law firm he had retained for basic services on the recommendation of his lawyer in San Francisco had finished with a court session and were back in their office. They confirmed that they would meet Lucas in his hotel suite tomorrow around 09:30am so they could read and process any emails, scans or faxes that he would send them during the night as Lucas found new problems or questions he wanted answers to during their meet.
Leaning backwards into the backrest, the teen closed his eyes and took a deep calming breath. Finally, something was going his way besides the train ride. Taking a few minutes to regulate his breathing and center his thoughts, the adolescent began to type through a series of messages to several agencies and organizations thanking them for acknowledging the reception and study of his case file and request for assistance against Lawrence. Once the polite missives were sent out, he answered the lawyer delegated by the firm to be his titular representative to confirm the hotel appointment. When that was done, he checked his voice mail by using a mirror function he had programmed in the portable station that allowed the smartphone and sat-phone chip-sets built into the device to use similar communication frequencies and applications by activating a separate window to control that specific circuitry. There were a few messages, very angry and not amused at all, from Lawrence and the same bozo at the NCQ drydock complaining about his absence from America and promising dire retaliations for it. Said threats were copied over to the dozen foreign ghost servers Lucas employed to keep his stash of incriminating evidence safe and then he called them back to answer.
After making certain the comms management suite's recording function was active and streaming live, he called his father and the NCQ minion together on video conference, regardless of the hour or Time zone, and answered them at the same time. "Well hello gentlemen." Lucas said, keeping a polite tone since he knew it would all be used in open court later on. "I received your Internex messages and am finally set to respond. I am presently in a pause, en route towards my hotel which I will reach in about an hour so I finally took my messages and called you both just as soon as I got them. I am in Canada, in Vancouver's Downtown District, and I have no plans or desires to go southward to NCQ, nor westward to Pearl Harbor either. Your much vaunted flagship will just have to function without me."
(Two Steps From Hell – Cannon in D minor)
The navy sailor was stunned silent at the completely unexpected contact at 22:00pm on a secured military line inside the ship itself that had gone straight through the switchboard and the dispatch officer as if they didn't exist. Lieutenant Denalt had heard rumors about the kid genius when he called an old buddy who worked at Stanford in their IT department, but this was beginning to scare him a bit. Lawrence was even more upset as he'd been dragged out of bed by the sound of the Internex console signaling an emergency communication at 05:00am coming in on his secured private line reserved for the WPP and UEO Fleet.
"What the Hell do you thing you're doing, you smarmy little bastard? I gave you ORDERS to get your fetid carcass to NCQ harbor and get on that boat even if it kills you! I have a 'court order' that says it! You're obliged to obey it, and me!" the rabid father exploded, using much cruder speech patterns and tone than he normally did when at his best. Lawrence had a very high opinion of himself and his standing in the community. He always tried to act and show off as being well educated, upper-class 'nobility' of the US's eastern seaboard. Right now, he was showing what he truly was deep down inside.
(Two Steps From Hell – Never Back Down)
"Is that so father?" asked Lucas in deceptively mild, urbane tones. He was a better orator than Lawrence and everybody who knew both was aware of this. "Could you tell me why exactly you think that a 15 year old boy has any place aboard a full-service, combat-enabled nuclear attack ship? Because I would like to know and so would several child protection agencies that I contacted."
Snorting like a panting bull, Lawrence dropped himself heavily on the chair besides the bedroom desk and rubbed an angry hand through his tangled mess of hair. Glaring with open contempt at his son, he spelled it out, biting the words as he did. "You are a menial little piece of tepid, wet excrement that parasites and infects everything he touches regardless of the damage it will do. You can't stay quiet in the hole I put you in, or even just be discrete when you disobey and leave that hole. I have had it up to my eyeballs with your disobedience, your indocility and your openly disrespectful rebellion against the authority of my will! You are going to find a way to get your stinking diseased ass to that boat and SUBMIT to the POWER and PUNISHMENTS of lieutenant Denalt as I ordered or you will end in jail for the rest of your life!" The completely out-of-control adult bellowed at the screen, spraying it with spittle as he did.
(Two Steps From Hell – Fearless)
Lucas responded with calm determination to the choleric attitude of his parent. "That's odd Father, because I don't recall seeing any 'court documents' stating you had any 'right or capacity' to place me onboard a military ship, especially one belonging to the fleet created by the international treaty of the UEO. I thought they were in fact NOT concerned by matters of civilian and familial laws since neither of the member states had wanted somebody above them legislating these things. By the way, since it's a 'court order', that means its public and supposed to be archived at the courthouse for consultation by the adverse party as well as Watch Dog groups and law students. Could you tell me which judge, in which city, at what court emitted the 'order'? Also, since I have had the same attorney of record for the last 6 years and you have had to deal with him, why did he not get notarized copies? Or a summons to court to represent my side of the case? In fact, why was I tried in absentia since I wasn't called to testify and rebut your crass allegations? These questions will be needing answers, Father, and soon. Until then, I'm going to be gleefully freezing my ass off in BC's evergreen forests with pleasure."
Lawrence grabbed the Internex monitor with both hands to shake the screen in lieu of his son. Swearing profusely in ways even the sailor thought interesting, the forty-six year old engineer was clearly and openly losing all remaining control over his volatile temper and his gestures as he swiped a water glass of the desk and threw it into the monitor, breaking the glass and denting the viewer. "You listen here, you filthy, sewer dwelling, little piece of runny, maggot spawning shite! Get your flea-bitten fleece back to Florida RIGHT * Fu-ck-ing * NOW mongrel back-alley cur! I want you on that boat before Saturday morning at 09:00am or I'll go up there and beat the life out of you with your own bleeding arm after I rip it off your shoulder!" The criminal parent devolved into the same set of threats he normally used against his only son.
Throwing the glass water carafe at the screen next, the technician howled out "I should'a finished you off two years ago in Stanford but I though you could be saved from yourself; obviously that was a pipe dream! If you aren't in the UEO Navy's punitive custody by Sunday, I will put every police department and mercenary group I can pay on the hunt to kill you before you do any more damage to my name and reputation! Fuck the laws! And the bleeding heart liberals! Obey my POWER or die!" Lawrence finished, leaning over the desk with both hands to hold his weight as he was panting too hard to catch his breath easily.
The UEO sailor had barely blinked as he witnessed the supposedly very urbane, highly educated engineer, the current darling of the UEO Cabinet, degenerate into a stark raving mad lunatic that seemed hell-bent on filicide against his minor-aged son. The boy however just listened calmly with the affected air of boredom the soldier usually saw on the faces of senior officers during meet-&-greets with politos or long paperwork sessions.
(Two Steps From Hell – Victory)
After the older adult had vented his spleen publicly, the submariner watched uneasily as the impressive young businessman raised a thin blond eyebrow and asked in murderously trite tones: "Are you done acting out such childish distemperment on a public, unshielded line or do you need more time to wake up properly in order to act civilized with us?"
Both adults could only look at the flint-blue eyes of the child, so cold and detached, bunkered behind emotional walls thick with steel plates and barbed wires. UEO Navy Lieutenant Denalt thought at that moment that whatever plot Lawrence had cooked up was dead in the water and done with. These were not the eyes of a little child afraid of his daddy's strap or a trip to the shed out back. Those eyes had seen death and maybe even caused it. The sailor forcibly repressed the shiver that wanted to crawl down his back at the realization that maybe he was dodging a bullet here. He hadn't really done any research on Wolenczak's kid before accepting the deal of breaking the boy's body and spirit for a wad of cash. It had sounded like easy money the way the old guy said it. But now? The kid was in a rented limousine, speaking of lawyers he had for years and 'court papers' like he knew how they worked? W-T-F was Wolenczak trying to dump in his arms?
"Excuse me, sirs" the sailor called out,getting the attention of both feuding relatives. "I am lieutenant René Denalt, bosun for the SeaQuest, in charge of crew discipline and orderliness. I would like to see that there 'court order' you spoke of, Mr Wolenczak senior, cuz it was never spoken to us that this boy was some difficult case or a – danger – of some sort. And also, we were not told of him having any money or lawyers independently of his parents since that means that he HAS to be present for all negotiations and agreements we hammer out. As he wasn't there or represented, I have to stall the process until it's all made crystal clear and above board. Now, sir, if you could email those notarized copies of the court papers to your son and me at the same time, the UEO's Navy would be much obliged."
Lawrence looked at the 29 year old sailor with enraged contempt in his eyes. "Screw you, coward! You can forget the money I promised you to break him and make him submissive to me! I'll find somebody with balls and a backbone to do it! Your boat can sink for all I care! But mark my words, boy! I will be calling UEO Fleet Head admiral Noyce as soon as the hour permits it, and I will be seeing a SATISFYING conclusion to this sordid story! Against BOTH of you!" Lawrence cut the line on his side, leaving the two others to their retched, worthless lives.
(Two Steps From Hell – Star Sky)
Now alone on the comms, Lucas looked at the UEO officer for real, giving him a cold, calculative, visual inspection that had the man twice his age squirming in discomfort on the other end. Denalt felt like he was chained to an autopsy table getting cut up while he was still warm enough to ask questions to the doctor that cut him. Shaking himself of the feeling, Denalt told Lucas "If you want to, we could bury the hatchet and come to an agreement against your old man. What he wanted me to do to you isn't fit for a rapist in jail, so I guess you would want to be aware of it and have some preparations, in case he does get to you..."
"Bury the hatchet, you say..." Lucas whispered menacingly as he removed the transparent vinyl cover from his cane's pommel to stroke the ax blade visibly with his thumb so the felonious sailor saw the gesture clearly on his monitor. As the sailor began to sweat large droplets along the sides of his face, the adolescent settled backwards more restfully into the banquette, fishing a chocolate bar and plastic bottle of orange juice from the deep hip pockets of his trench coat as he got comfortable for the next round of negotiations.
(Two Steps From Hell – Winterspell)
"I hope for your sake, lieutenant that you are not wasting my time. Unless you have written or filmed proof of your monetary transactions with Lawrence, we are done here. And then, you will find out painfully that my parents have not taught me any of the virtues of mercy." the juvenile scientist spoke out in slow, carefully elocuted words. If this subhuman 'thing' wanted to turn coats on Lawrence, who was Lucas to keep him from it? Besides, the entire conversation was all recorded for posterity so even if the man died or refused to testify, the electronic films would suffice.
Northern hospitality
(Lord of the Rings – The Shire)
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 19:43pm
Vancouver city; Stanley Park
British Columbia, Canada
It had taken almost a half hour more for Lucas to conclude his conversation and deal with lieutenant Denalt in such a way that the man spoke out loud what was needed to hang himself and Lawrence at the same time. The chauffeur had heard nothing of the conversations as the partition between the driver's compartment and the passenger cabin had been closed. The teenager opened the panel when he was done and ready to roll onwards to the hotel. After giving the go-ahead, he closed his workstation down and placed it back in the briefcase for the duration of transit. That laptop system was unique, hard to build and configure properly so he wasn't taking any risks by having it open during the trip. When the case was closed, he took up his smartphone to call the hotel management to warn them of his coming in, exactly in the time period that had been foreseen, so that a manager was available to take him up to show him the suite upon his arrival.
The road to the hotel was indeed an hour long. They rolled on Hastings Street going west until the end where they did an 'S' turn to join with Georgia Street to traverse the large Stanley Park. The limousine rolled along Georgia Street into a stretch of highway interchange then unto the Stanley Park Causeway that changed name to Lions Gate Bridge Road in the middle of the park. The roadway left the park at Prospect Point to cross the massive iconic Lions Gate Bridge over the entry of Vancouver Harbour and into the West Vancouver sector. The Lions Gate Bridge Road continued all the way to another highway interchange to turn westward on Marine Drive across the Capilano River bridge into Park Royal District and then right up north on 6th Avenue, turning right again on Clyde Avenue until they reached the hotel complex on the shores of the Capilano River, surrounded by trees and snow.
{ SQ } - { Wooden box Deluxe } - { SQ }
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 20:51pm
Daleminton Hotel, shore of the Capilano River
Park Royal, West Vancouver, BC, Canada
The youth had not used a travel agency, preferring to do everything himself to control the process and have personal contact inside each train line, the hotel management and any other service provider he could need to ask extras from to make things simpler on his life. His current health and lack of physical strength didn't leave him any other choices but to plan for the worst possible situations so the by-passes and contingencies were in place from the onset.
(The Hobbit – Far over the Misty Mountains cold)
The young man's research over the web had found a respectable 4+ stars highly appreciated hotel complex styled like a traditional mountain country inn. It was composed of three main buildings standing seven storeys each, with a family restaurant in the south edifice, a business-type restaurant in the middle edifice with a separate tavern & night club combo in the north edifice. At the back of the inn was located a pair of separate edifices built in the solarium type.
The solarium located centrally was the pool hall. It's main floor was subdivided with the tall vaulted main hall holding an olympic size swimming pool surrounded by cedar benches and coffee tables for relaxing by the waterside. There were also six semi-private side rooms, all on the mountain's view side, for hot tubs with cedar benches, a full snack bar, a dozen private full washrooms for showering and relief and a couple of telecoms cabins. The mezzanine level was split in two sectors; a thin wrap-around balcony overlooking the main pool with many small two-seat tables for couples and the enclosed private rooms located above the snack bar for massages.
The second solarium, located behind the south edifice, was a sports & fitness club open to any who pay one of the membership packages without need to rent a room in the hotel. In fact, one of their specials included access to the otherwise private pool complex that normally accepted only the people reserving rooms for several days. The sports zone was also designed with a main floor where the running track, fighting rinks and most weights machines were placed. The mezzanine had half of the washrooms, a full snack bar emphasizing healthy eating and a thin wrap-around balcony for two-seat tables for relaxing while having a snack.
The third plot was fenced-in land behind the northern edifice that served as open-air parking lot for the clients that rent rooms for any length of time. It also had a small service station for gasoline and two enclosed garages for mechanical work built close to the hotel edifice. The private garage station was owned by the hotel and open 24 hours every day, even holidays. As an added safety, the crew from the service station had enough varied skills that they could handle some of the building's mechanics like plumbing leaks or clogs, electricity and basic carpentry thus giving the hotel a small measure of in-house workmanship to stall problems until the external professionals called in arrived.
The hotel faced inside the district to the west while the rear was towards the east and the shores of the Capilano River; thus the 'left' was north and the 'right' was south. The outside of the three main buildings was magnificent in a northern country type of aesthetic that gave tourists a genuine sense of vacation time and peace at the end of the road. The entire complex was made to look like a great multi-level log cabin with wooden banisters on the many wide balconies and rustic dormers in the slanted wood shingle roofs. The huge 'A'-frame roof supported by eight trios of round logs that served as car port to cover the main guest entry in the front driveway really had a serious mountain home feel, even in the early evening darkness.
Lucas had consulted the website of the hotel to find what he could about the structural specs. The entire hotel complex was actually built solidly with a steel girder & re-bar frame covered in pumped concrete then clad in decorative natural half-logs on the outside with all solid natural wood planks inside. Add plush inch-thick carpeting, decorative wall tapestries and a plethora of wood burning stone fireplaces or cast iron stoves as fit the needs of the rooms and you had the perfect 'mountain chalet look' all over.
{ SQ } - { Cedar closet } - { SQ }
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 21:08pm
Daleminton Hotel, shore of the Capilano River
Park Royal, West Vancouver, BC, Canada
Under the lights of the car port since it had been dark outside before they left Downtown, the young man finished signing the chauffeur's work ticket then took his wheeled trunk and carry-on bag from the car's trunk to pull them into the hotel lobby. Given how tired he was, he didn't pay much attention to the internal décor beyond seeing lots and lots and LOTS of varnished wood on the walls and furniture of the cozy sitting areas and massive round log welcome counter. The two monumental river stone fireplaces were exquisite and invitingly warm but not enough to make him stop on his march to his new 'home'.
A quick show of his reservation print-out with ID card and passport had the evening shift manager coming to greet him with a smile and extended hand. The adolescent counted himself lucky that it was the same older woman who had taken care of him over the phone several days ago. It would avoid problems if his extras hadn't been done correctly and he needed to file a grievance along the request to complete the job properly for his usage. Lucas had reserved a full suite for 30 days in the central 'business' wing of the complex to avoid little kids or partying young couples bothering him. Since it meant he also got the Internex access by fiber optics instead of general WiFi, it would have been his default choice anyways.
(The Hobbit – Rivendell)
Besides the caliber of web access, the young man had two specific criteria to choose the suite he wanted. He needed a room as close to the ground floor as possible to make an evacuation in case of fire or paramedic intervention easier due to the health problems that had been recurring since the last beating his dad had inflicted two years ago. Because of those troubles, Lucas anticipated many medical treatments that would cause more mobility issues in the near future so the room had to be fully accessible, even to a walker or wheelchair. Of course, if the treatments were too long or complex, he would be obliged to leave to relocate near the hospital, and it would have to be a livable space big enough for the full-time valet-driver and live-in nurse he would hire to stay mobile and active in his own defense. Secondly, the teenager wanted a room that was oriented towards the wilderness, not houses and streets. He wanted a sense of vacationing, of isolation and forest peace.
The other reason for the month-long rental was that Lucas had already taken appointments with three different real estate professionals for the period between Christmas and New Year's Day celebrations. His goal was to find either a condo or townhouse with enough services that he wouldn't have to worry about housekeeping until he was ready to buy an actual detached house big enough for him and at least three full time employees. Since he wanted to purchase his home in the northern parts of town, out of the heavily populated zones to avoid traffic jams and nosy neighbors, then he had to look in the suburbs at closest or the rural areas at the farthest. Due to his health and technology based contracts, it wasn't logical to go so far out of urban zones that he would end up buying bare land and building a new homestead off-grid, even though he could hire pros and have it done for him easy enough.
The mature female manager, Mrs Rhoda Ohyun, was a short, black haired, green eyed chinese grand-mother who had seen a lot in her almost thirty years as manager for Daleminton. She was very accommodating with her young guest for good causes. He was polite and mild mannered, speaking in urbane tones when his soft yet firm voice was heard. She enjoyed having to deal with him compared to other, older patrons who thought they were handing her a gift by their presence. Lucas was demanding and very exacting in his needs, but also proportionally understanding of the time crunch and costs associated with his demands. He had not balked at paying; he only asked for a fully itemized quotation for his review before authorizing the work and then an invoice with the final price including any rush-job surcharges or unforeseen extras. Everything was named and addressed to his company seated in Buffalo City, New York State, USA, to his supplies & payments manager. If all her clients could be so professional in their attitude, her job (and life) would be much easier. Not to mention that many teenagers she had known could use this boy as a role model of good manners and public behavior, including her own sons back at that age. They had been decent kids, but not like this one.
Manager Ohyun insisted that Lucas let a bellhop load his luggage onto a brass dolly to push for them all the way to the room instead of dragging the whole batch himself. Feeling tired and worn out by the day despite that he had essentially slept the morning away in the train car, the youth agreed and placed everything, including his heavy trench coat, hat, scarf and gloves on the wheeled cart, staying dressed in his business jacket that he opened to breathe more easily inside the rather cozy hotel. With nothing left but the cold steel cane to lean on, the teenager signaled he was ready to move. They went up the two floors in a glass-sided elevator, passing by the crescent shape lobby mezzanine on the first floor with its cozy river stone fireplace, coffee shop kiosk and many deep plush sofas and couches in which to sit while waiting for a friend or business meeting. This level also had the closed conference rooms for private meetings and the large banquet hall for celebrations like weddings or graduation parties.
Arriving at the second floor, they walked out of the elevator and to door #204, just as promised over the phone. The businessman suite had a simplistic but completely furnished floor plan that was exactly what customers needed for their lengthy business voyages.
The entry of the suite was right in the middle of the kitchen area; there was a bench seat with space under the seat for shoes, a tall backboard that had hooks for coats and an elevated shelf for hats and gloves on the right of the door. On the left was a tall, thin closet to hold the suite's vacuum cleaner attachments, mops, buckets and such for daily maintenance by room service. The kitchen counters and appliances were placed in a extra-wide 'U' shape that optimized the galley-style design. The right side had a set of wide deep counters with a professional 6-hob gas range/oven, followed by stacked built-in toaster oven, microwave oven and then the extra-large 2-door fridge. On the left side, the other wide counter began past the closet and held a huge deluxe automatic hot/cold drinks brewer fit for a restaurant located next to wide, deep double sinks with a garbage grinder in one basin. Between the doors of the lesser bedroom and bathroom there was a small glass-fronted bar buffet with hanging stemware rack. All the alcohol had been removed and replaced by a variety of Perrier flavored spring waters and colored sparkling fruit juice coolers in individual bottles that imitate well known wine flavors. Lucas had asked for the 'no alcohol' orders to be written as an item on his invoice to prove the government that he was following local laws during his refugee claims hearing.
Passed the kitchen zone was the dedicated dining area. The artisanal table was made of twisted natural pine limbs and roots, cleaned and varnished a clear shiny beige tone that supported a large glass pane with discrete soft green LED's to under-light the table for relaxing evening meals. There were eight chairs made of natural pine wood, deeply padded with oiled deerskin leather upholstery. A buffet with all the Daleminton branded dishes, flatware and table linens was placed against the right-hand wall.
(The Hobbit – I see fire)
The living area was separated from the kitchen & dining zone by a large free-standing monumental mountain stone fireplace. The hearth was enormous with a big four-sided cast iron insert that gave a cooking surface for 3 pans and baking grill inside on the dining room side in case of power outage. There was a wide sectional five-seat couch with 'L' shaped lounging extensions on both sides, two pivoting Lazy Boy reclining sofas and a low wooden coffee table, all oriented towards the right wall. On that right hand wall was a massive 3 foot high by 6 foot wide restaurant-grade view-screen surrounded by decorative rustic pinewood built-in storage units finished with open fronts. The exterior wall was ¾ windows, composed of the folding accordion doors that led to the balcony shared with the master bedroom.
On the left hand of the suite were situated the two enclosed bedrooms with king-sized beds and monumental mountain stone fireplaces in each. One room was the 'Boss' room with access to the balcony by a set of accordion-style folding doors while the other was the 'Employee' room or private office depending on the needs of the travelers and it's door was located just after the kitchen counters.
There was a single extra-large common bathroom for the whole suite, located between the bedrooms with the door facing the huge central fireplace. The bathroom was separated into three sub-zones; the roll-in shower and handicapped-support bathtub combo were enclosed at the far end, the toilet cubicle in the middle and the double vanity with two stools and floor-to-ceiling segmented tailor's mirror was at the entry. There was a cast iron wood burning device with glass-sided firebox in the wall between bath and toilet to act as both a romantic display and functional backup water heater in case the electricity and central gas-burning boilers were offline.
There was no washer & dryer nor any dishwasher since the hotel's room service would come pick up dishes, trays, soiled linens, clothes and trash bags twice per day at relatively reliable hours.
{ SQ } - { Picky client } - { SQ }
Daleminton Hotel, room #204
Lucas had asked for the bed and unneeded furnishings in the bedroom without patio access to be removed so he could set up his mobile network equipment in a secure locking area. The hotel management were already well aware of his electronic devices coming in from UPS Overland Services; the concierge had emailed him confirmation of the hotel's reception of the heavy shipping boxes at around 09:17am while he slept on the Via train. The two large wheeled thermoplastic transport crates were already placed in the empty room, waiting for him to unpack and set up.
Did the hotel protest or say it couldn't do this because he's too young or didn't have an adult signing the papers for him? Of course not! The nice receptionist that took his reservations passed him off to her shift manager, his current escort, a much more experienced woman employed by the hotel for over forty-five years, who then explained the costs of the extras he was asking for. Lucas had replied by asking her if the option to pay for an increase to the hotel's insurance policies included in every room rental was available due to the value of the equipments he would house in her building. His kind, polite business demeanor made the woman answer in the same tones, listing the types of special-case coverage they offered through their insurance provider and what the terms and costs would be.
Since the young man had quite agreeably paid them the work hours needed to clear out the room of all furniture except one set of low service counters next to the stone fireplace with the coffee maker, mini-fridge and its furnishings, the hotel manager was quite happy to oblige his needs. Just like his requests to bolster the electrical system's stability while adding extra high voltage electrical outlets, establish several secured fiber optics sockets, extra telephone lines, extra ventilation as per his schematics and use his own electronic locking device on the door of that specific bedroom so the chambermaids didn't accidentally touch something that could be damaging or costly to fix.
As Lucas explained to the manager; "When a computer program is doing it's compilation run, it can't be stopped or you scrap the entire run and start over again. Since it can take several hours to do the entire prep then two to four hours to compile the program into a usable format, it was better to avoid issues. If I have to use the bathroom, answer a lengthy phone call with a client or worse, go for the medical appointments that I will have due to my injuries, and possibly surgery, the risks are too high for problems to arise. I simply can't believe that every employee in the hotel will remember to stay out or not touch the office setup I will create."
The manager told him he hadn't asked for anything out of this world to date, just rare, but since he paid and his corporate Visa card had passed without a hitch, then he would receive the services required. The fact was that Lucas had cooperated extensively with Mrs Ohyun by sending over digitally the notarized copies of his passport, Blue Shield insurance card, train tickets for Amtrak and Via Rail, Canadian customs forms for his machines and also the paperwork to ask 'investor immigrant' status in the country along with dual citizenship. She had also been given the references for his lawyer, physician of record and psychotherapist of record too. Maybe, just maybe, the young man didn't suffer a deficit of credibility with the older woman because he had buried her under a bureaucratic avalanche like an adult businessman would do. Maybe...?
Respite by the roadside
(The Hobbit – The Shire)
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 21:24pm
Daleminton Hotel, room #204
Park Royal, West Vancouver, BC, Canada
Now finally alone with himself and his thoughts, the young migrant could finally breathe easy and let fall the mental mask and shields he had maintained all day in front of everybody. He would need them back tomorrow morning for the lawyers but he could stay quiescent until then. Walking around the suite to memorize the lay of the land, he opened the network room that he would have to set up before going to bed. The two large wheeled transit crates were there, waiting placidly for their master to open and deploy their capacities unto the cyber-world again.
Taking off his jacket and opening his brown flannel shirt to mid-chest, the teen went to the master bedroom to change clothes completely so he could be comfortable during his obliged burst of late-evening activity. Setting the carry-on bag on the bed, he began the process of taking off his boots and sweaty socks, emptying his pockets of every little item that had accumulated in two days then changing outfits. He would drop his travel clothes in the bathroom hamper for the laundry service to pick-up later on around 23:00pm when they did the rounds.
Now dressed in comfortable well worn dark purple jeans and a new black turtleneck long sleeved shirt with the Stanford logo on the pocket on the left breast, Lucas placed his smartphone in the shirt pocket, put on the traveler's belt and filled his pockets with wallets, keys and other necessities. Just in case he had to run. Lawrence knew where he was, so did the UEO as that was part of the defensive scheme; be publicly visible so he could officially ask for help and protection from the Canadian government. The downside was of course that he was now semi-immobile and very visible on all fronts. He would need to place his defenses on the war footing ASP and then plan for a quick getaway in case the worse came to be and the police or government decided to not protect him.
Padding barefoot across the sinfully plush, warm carpet back to his new workshop with his aluminum briefcase in hand, he resolved to set-up tonight the first half of his masterful piece of electronics, cybernetics and software engineering; the mobile Cyberghast hub, before going to bed.
{ SQ } - { Demanding child } - { SQ }
Going into the office/workshop room, he slid open the twin-paneled pocket doors to make certain the original locks had been removed and the doors were solidly encased in the slide frame. Satisfied with his findings, he went over to the walls where the new sockets had been expertly put in as per his – expensively paid – exacting demands.
Regular telephony; 2 new wall plates, each being 4 ports non-switch with distinct lines, separate ## numbers, with integrated power surge protection and individual reset switch on each port. Good.
Network/Internex; 2 new wall plates, each being 4 ports fiber-optics active hub with integrated power surge protection, breaker switches and configurable firmware on mobile flash-ROM chipset individual to each port so as to have four IP addresses that can be mutated at will with specialty industrial equipment and know-how. Which he had on hand. Good.
Basic Electrical; four new wall plates each having four AC 120 volts 60 Hertz, with integrated power surge protection, individual breaker switches for each socket and small LED to indicate which plug was active or dead. Good.
Heavy Electrical; two new wall plates each having two AC 240 volts 60 Hertz, with integrated power surge protection, individual breaker switches for each socket and small LED to indicate which plug was active or dead. Good.
Ventilation; bigger incoming grate with four large fans to push cool air into the room 24/7 until he packed up and left. Wall mounted controls with dials to indicate the state & speed of each fan. The entire system was power surge protected with individual electrical wires, breakers and switches for each fan plus the master interrupter, all visible on the wall plate controller.
All normal light switches in the room were already sliding dimmers so they stayed untouched.
The fireplace was unlit and would stay cold, with a solidly bolted grate that could be opened if the deadbolt on it was undone. As the room had to be cold for the equipment to operate, it was imperative to keep all heating to the minimal amount. The empty fireplace meant that the cold air from the ceiling fans could come down into the room, circulate and then exit through the inert conduit and out of the building above the roofs thusly helping to evacuate the incredible amount of constant heat generated by the mobile systems.
{ SQ } - { Budgeting for warfare } - { SQ }
In terms of budget and logic, some people might think it was a fool's errand when he could have just bought a commercial condo in an office building or even bought a full house and settled for that but neither would have done the job. It would have taken several weeks of delays for the selection and transactions to happen at the soonest; where would he live or work during that time? Then, any place he rented would have needed utilities upgrades to support the mobile systems anyways while any purchased emplacement would need even bigger upgrades to sustain both mobile & permanent equipments. Secondly, the vast majority of locals and houses would not have the level of security and living human support that the hotel complex offered, especially for a short duration. When those variables were considered fully, then you add the multiple services and products offered in-house by the hospitality around the suite and it became a simple choice to make for a short duration of a month to a year until he could renovate or build a permanent edifice of his own.
In terms of budget, he was a multi-millionaire with steady yearly revenue above 2 million USD since he was 11 years old and Wolenbahn had netted a profit around 37 million USD for the year 2020 that was ending soon due to contracts with The World Bank and several other financial or research institutions. By leaving most of that specific money in the many 'outside' companies he had created, he could put all the bills on the business expense accounts and claim tax deductions at the end of the fiscal year to recover some of the functioning expenses. By optimizing the business suppliers' tax breaks and deductions, paying on credit card or bank loaned credit margin, the fees of which were deductible as well, and offering occasional exchanges of services instead of money payments meant he could afford this setup easily.
And that was just with WE revenues and funds on hand; if he actually started to deploy the vast 200 year old wealth of Wise Apothecary & Chemists then he could easily have upwards of 400,000,000$ in cash to maneuver with. Not that he would do that; it would be much wiser to contract business mortgages or short term company loans than take out the cash. Then, there were also the investment portfolios, the trust funds, and the multiple manors, offices, laboratories, workshops and distribution warehouses that had the hundreds of employees hard at work that could all be put as collateral to get bigger, longer mortgages if need be. No, Lucas wasn't hurting for cash or resources; it was time that he lacked, time and foresight to be aware of the coming troubles.
All of THAT wealth, most of it hidden, didn't mean he would throw money in a pit. No; he simply knew that with Lawrence gunning for his life, he'd better use it while he had it. There was no telling when he could lose either the cash or the freedom to make his own decisions himself but the companies and trust funds at least were all in his name alone and no court in the USA could change that while he yet lived. Which of course Lawrence was working incessantly to change. As such, any payments made that would insure his freedom by establishing surveillance webs, remote control zones and warning devices had to be accepted and assumed as the necessities they were. And now there was US Naval Intel in the mix, as if church groups and mercenaries weren't enough to make him stress out already.
Still, mentally reviewing the Daleminton invoices, it came to a staggering amount:
Hotel rental;
Room, daily rate, adjusted for monthly rental (550$/day) coming to (16,500$)
Insurance upgrade for industrial equipments (2,500$) for one month, extensible
Sub-total (19,000$)
Just the suite rental price spoke of luxury and quality, obscenely so. Add the many costs for the extra electricity, network and venting and you could scare off anybody from ever having such projects.
Standard Telephony;
2 extra drop-lines from the utilities poles (9,000$ x 2)
New 12 port switch module on the hotel's phone server (2,000$)
Passing 8 new individual phone wires from the server to the suite (1,600$)
Wall mounts inside the suite (400$ x 2) + install (300$)
sub-total (22,700$)
Rush job fees (4,000$) charged by local telecoms company
Fiber-optics;
2 extra T-3 capacity drop-lines from the utilities poles (15,000$ x 2)
Dedicated Internex industrial 12 port auto-switch module (11,000$)
Passing 8 dedicated individual fiber-optics from the server to the suite (4,800$)
Wall mounts inside the suite (1,100$ x 2) + install (900$)
sub-total (48,900$)
Rush job fees (20,000$) charged by local telecoms company
Standard electrical AC 120 Volts;
Dedicated main breaker panel '4 switches' in hotel machinery basement (4,000$)
Dedicated breaker panel '16 switches' in the suite (3,000$)
Passing 4 dedicated main cables from basement breakers to the suite (1,000$ x 4)
Laboratory-grade wall mounts inside the suite (300$ x 4) + install (400$)
sub-total (12,600$)
Rush job fees (4,000$) charged by the electrical contractors
Heavy electrical AC 240 Volts;
Dedicated main breaker panel '2 switches' in hotel machinery basement (4,000$)
Dedicated breaker panel '4 switches' in the suite (3,000$)
Passing 2 dedicated main cables from basement breakers to the suite (1,600$ x 2)
Laboratory-grade wall mounts inside the suite (400$ x 2) + install (260$)
sub-total (11,260$)
Rush job fees (4,000$) charged by the electrical contractors
Ventilation fans;
Rebuilding ceiling to expand fan grate (2,000$)
Workshop-grade 4-fan grate w/sensors (850$)
Dedicated breaker panel '4 switches' inside the suite (1,400$)
Dedicated electrical wires individualized by fan (300$ x 4)
sub-total (5,450$)
Rush job fees (1,000$) charged by the electrical contractors
Total parts & labor for upgrades: (100,910$)
Total rush fees: (33,000$)
Hotel part paid on contractual terms: (-26,800$) returned to Lucas
Because the improvements would stay permanently in the hotel and become usable by anybody when Lucas left the complex, the management had accepted to absorb 20% of his expenditures in exchange for his doing a full sweep and security check of their airwaves, wires and servers, followed by connecting them to his remote support & management hub. They had essentially decided that the young man knew damn well what he was doing so they wanted to hire him as an external contractor to establish a higher level of network safety and efficiency for their organization and clientele. Eventually, they planned to ask him to redesign and rebuilt the entire electrical, telephonic, fiber-optics and ventilation ductworks inside the complex when the usable life of the systems expired in around 6 years. Their insurance provider and the city's new building code would push them to do the changes and renovate by gutting out the 35 year old infrastructures so having a competent contractor already attached to them by active service plans was a good idea.
Now; the fees had piled up at an incredible speed and it was time to get his money's worth in results.
{ SQ } - { First gift of Christmas unwrapped } - { SQ }
Lucas turned his attention to the large wheeled thermoplastic box marked 'Wolenbahn Electronics International Inc – CG/MH adm/sysop' to get the basic setup to secure the room and then the suite around it. Using the complex custom biometric scanner-lock built into the freight box, the boy typed in a code and then spoke pass phrases in four languages to make the security system disarm and give access to the contents.
After the thermoplastic covering clicked, the four sides of the box all slid upwards on small pneumatic pistons, allowing to see and access the active safety buffer between the cartage container and the actual payload inside. The tempered glazed steel panels of the actual safety carrier were ½ inch thick and crisscrossed on both sides by inlaid superconductor metal wire that linked to the 'box integrity' scanners to validate the state of the payload and deny forcible access to thieves. Anybody who cut those sensitive wires would not like the results. It was called 'active security measures' for a reason.
After going through another biometric scanner with four more languages, the inner crate was finally open and ready to serve. Those steel panels were hinged along the vertical post near the 'back' of the dolly and had three other hinges to fold like an accordion to have less trouble opening in confined spaces like inside a cargo truck or small self-storage hangar. This box contained a set of big oil & spring pistons that held up a combination of flat table, three articulated solid keyboards and three articulated Internex enabled monitors that pulled out and deployed to form a mobile command post, chair not included. In other compartments were the electronic locks that would be installed on the office doors and several models of full-color cameras for remote surveillance; some wired, some not and some heavy industrial models that had both capacities as well as a motorized joint.
Lucas began by opening his briefcase that he set on the floor by the doors and then placed his portable workstation atop the freight box that was still closed, using it as a high workbench. As soon as his unique laptop was online, he activated the personal comms management suite and elongated the antennas from the sides of the monitor to test out the cellular and satellite signals for strength and quality. A quick, easy setup of cables had the electricity, conventional phone line and fiber-optics port connected for testing as well so he could know just what exactly was going on inside the walls and utilities of the hotel.
{ SQ } - { Closed door policy } - { SQ }
Whilst the 'small' portable was running its usual downloads of messages and tests, Lucas went back to the doors, armed with a locksmith kit and a cardboard box that held his custom built lock. In less than ten minutes of manual labor, the new electronic security system was attached and ready to boot up when the last two steps were done.
Taking another long wire from his briefcase, the teen plugged the custom-made cable into the unique proprietary socket on the door lock then plugged the other end into a similar socket on his laptop CPU. Once the connection was established in full-duplex, he began the onerous, 15 minute job of priming and coding the lock's circuitry so the biometric scanner and card-swipe reader would recognize only those parameters he would authorize. That done, he could now finish the install by connecting the custom proprietary power cord, telephony and network cables to the Cyberghast management hub.
The locking device had several ways to insure that if the locks were broken or the power went out, he would get messaged about it. Inside the body of the lock was a wireless cellphone circuit with antenna, then a classic telephone wire and a fiber-optics network cable. There was even a dedicated chipset with the function of signaling through the electrical power cord on a specific modulation and frequency that would get picked up and forwarded by an inter-modal signal repeater he would discretely install elsewhere in the hotel. The ventilation ducts in the ceiling above the bathroom should be hidden enough yet easily accessible when needed without having to leave the suite and risk being seen in areas he shouldn't visit.
{ SQ } - { I see you with my many glowing eyes } - { SQ }
On top of the masterful piece of locking engineering, he would install several cameras in the room, suite, hallway and balcony to remotely monitor what happened to his equipment and personal effects. Some cameras would be big and visible to deter idiots whilst small hidden ones would make certain that if the visible cams were off-line, he would still see what happened, by whom and why. Going back to the open crate, he pulled out the first big camera to mount it high on the wall facing the only doorway into the room. As requested, the hotel had installed several hard wood reinforcement plates at the desired areas so he could do his own installations. Lucas got the small wireless power tools from the cubbies inside the cart then used them to put in place the base-plate, then the motorized joints and then the actual camera body which would get a set of cables: power, regular phone line and network. Once the main camera was wired to the Cyberghast hub in the appropriate sockets just like the door lock, Lucas unplugged his laptop from the wall sockets to plug it instead into the private hub's System Operator's backup terminal socket.
As soon as the idling electronics in the battery-sustained hub detected the presence of it's master brain, it triggered the extension of the desk & monitor station. At the same time, four pneumatic jacks under the cart extended downwards into the carpet until the dolly lifted off the floor by two full inches and stabilized at level. Several LED's of varying colors blinked as the monstrous creation woke up the first half of its body, waiting for its master's will. Inside five minutes, the boot-up sequence was done and the CG-hub had scanned and recognized the door lock and camera as its primary safeties, all enslaved to the remote overwatch capacities of the portable workstation and synchronized smartphone through the heavily encrypted 'Virtual-Private-Network' that Lucas had coded and ciphered for his own – exclusive – personal usage.
{ SQ } - { Nesting in the woods } - { SQ }
(The Hobbit – The Shire)
The rest of the long lonely evening was spent in relaxing, solitary work as cameras were unpacked, installed and configured. The teenager interrupted his work, closing the office doors and locking them, to use the toilet, splash some warm water on his face and make himself an excellent cappuccino with the automated brewer on the kitchen counter. Come 23:00pm he went to tour the kitchen pantry and fridge in detail before deciding that he wanted to take a real break, not make more trouble for himself. Everything had good basic staples stored, but taking the time to cook would not make the security setup get built faster whereas ordering room service would let him work and then truly call it a night when the meal got here ready to eat without efforts on his part.
Of course, what Lucas didn't want to really admit was that he could barely put frozen french fries in a toaster oven without burning them to ash; the idea of him cooking something complex was not to be entertained lightly at this point in time. Given his young age and how the boarding situation had been in the brownstone, the adult surveillant had been in charge of making meals and stocking the fridges and pantries for the kids to be fed in the simplest way possible. Then, after he was forced to live alone in his office suite back in San Francisco, anything he didn't order from the deli downstairs or the chinese place two streets over had to be small enough to fit in the microwave oven or the toaster oven. Even his personal coffee maker had been simplistic in the extreme since it was a Keurig counter-top capsule brewer; any idiot could use those without issues. All he did was fill up the water reservoir every morning and even setting the thing's timer to brew at fixed hours to wake him up was easy.
Of course, the timer on a Keurig brewer was a digital computer, so that did explain WHY he thought the coffee machine was easy to use. Pasty white little runt, he was...
It did mean however that Lucas had never been showed how to cook much of anything so letting him loose in the kitchen would be done incrementally. In slow increments, to keep it safe. And given that he had obtained a bachelor's degree in 'Laboratory Techniques, Equipments and IT management for Health Sciences' at the age of ten, it was the height of irony that while he could mix chemicals to prepare a prescription drug on a doctor's request, he could barely boil water with a kettle on the hob without starting a fire in the appliances.
Snort! - He really had a weird life!
Sitting himself at the dining table to take a few minutes to savor his fresh coffee, the teen used the medium sized hard-wired datapad set in the furniture's middle that was the hotel's supplied method of browsing their services or placing orders if you were comfortable with web merchants and humanless purchases. Finding what he wanted easily enough in the main restaurant's host table which was available through the night during holiday season, the adolescent bought himself a nicely sized meal of fire braised elk steak with grilled veggies, mashed potatoes and peppercorn-mushroom sauce. Since it was a full-meal special, he also got the French-Canadian pea soup and piece of black forest cake along the main course. The restaurant confirmed delivery inside 45 minutes to his suite so he got back to work in the office room.
With a dozen cameras out of twenty and one of the three phantom signal repeaters already installed, he could now do the secondary boot-up of the CG-hub. That meant unrolling the heavy AC 220 volt power cables from the primary cart and plugging them in crossed sockets. One cable went into socket A of plate 1 then the other cable went into socket B of plate 2. After that he had to connect the telephone lines, the fiber-optics and call the hotel management office to warn them he was about to activate the industrial-grade systems which would now drain a significant amount of electricity on their grid.
Lucas had to wait 5 minutes for the manager to call down to the janitors' office so they would activate the circuits since they had been kept inert until the request for power came down. As soon as the LED's on the wall plates glowed, the teen ramped up the ventilation fans then took specialty custom keys out of his pocket to unlock the breaker panel on the Cyberghast hub carriage. Each breaker to activate a segment of the device had its own key and there was a specific, secret order to follow when lighting up the machinery or else it would self-destruct QUITE destructively. Shunting two 220 volt lines' worth of juice into circuit boards, monitors, 6 lithium-ion battery arrays and 2 acid-based power regulators would result in an explosive meltdown of epic proportions and severely hurt anybody in the room. And that was before the active security measures triggered too.
"Kill it with fire; FIRE cleanses All" goes the proverb... And BURN it would, if triggered wrong.
As the distinctive song of live electricity running through the components was heard, the juvenile prodigy began to truly relax. Soon, he would be back in full swing. He had been unable to oversee his company's many offices and production workshops for too long already. And the big clients would probably want some form of assurance he was still alive and well to supply them with answers to their problems, no matter where he was physically located. The youth smiled a true genuine smile of happiness when the three monitors above the extensible desk lit up, displaying his default background imagery and start-up routine with the left-hand screen having the desktop applications already active and waiting. The right-hand screen had the personal comms management suite active and processing all his messages on all channels whilst also downloading from the portable station and synchronizing with all his devices, including his hidden button-camera recorder's film archive.
When the first half of the hub was fully active, Lucas glanced at the second dolly indolently, telling himself that he could do that tomorrow afternoon or even in the evening. The rack-mount servers were nice but not necessary just yet and he didn't need the specialty hacking and splicing virtual tools for the coming night. He would open and activate that box of malice at a later time, when the need was there.
Night cap
(The Hobbit – The Shire)
Friday 18th of December, 2020; 00:01am (midnight)
Daleminton Hotel, room #204
Park Royal, West Vancouver, BC, Canada
With about ten minutes left before his meal arrived, Lucas packed the power tools into the carriage cubbies and locked all the small compartments tightly then unplugged his portable workstation for the night. He would put it on the nightstand by his bed and reconnect it tomorrow when it was time to finish the build of the CG hub's secondary component. Making certain all his devices were in place, including the button-cam and recorder, the adolescent walked out of the room, closed all the regular lights and locked the office door with the new massive electronic lock that beeped, eliciting a mirror beep from the cellphone in his shirt pocket to confirm the lock had engaged.
Going to the master bedroom to dump the workstation on the bed and pick up some socks and soft thin interior shoes for the rest of the night, Lucas hurried as much as his aching legs and cane allowed to get back to the small bench besides the suite's door to finish preparing for the delivery. At about fifty minutes from the moment he ordered, the door chime rang and a young male voice spread through the suite by the intercom speakers. "Hello; room service for #204 from the restaurant. I have your meal, sir."
Standing up while leaning on the weaponized cane for support, Lucas looked at the security monitor mounted to the inside of the door itself; he could see the young adult with white skin, brown hair, green eyes and the hotel uniform pushing a service cart with a covered tray. Satisfied the man was alone in the corridor, he rang the bell to automatically open the door while walking away from the portal a bit, just to have some distance in case... Well, in case of anything, really. With his mobility limited and his reflexes dulled by the pills he had taken all afternoon and evening coupled to the fatigue that was becoming felt, the youth couldn't take chances with anything or person that walked into the suite.
Grasping firmly the steel pommel of the cane with both hands, the juvenile businessman affected an air of studious disinterest as the valet rolled the cart into the suite straight to the dining room table where he set the warm tray then the smaller covered bowl with the cold dessert. "Will that be all sir? Do you want me to open a bottle of wine or beer for you to accompany the meal?" the server asked politely, ready to complete the service at the table as was standard in such high class establishments when you ordered something in-house.
Shaking his head negatively from his position by the bank of wall mounted ovens in the kitchen, the teenager signaled he would finish the rest himself if he needed more. Nodding with a smile, the young valet took a strip of paper from his vest pocket and looked it over before placing it on top of the meal tray's cover. It was the printed invoice for the food, delivery and tip, all included and paid by credit card on the moment of ordering so the man had nothing else to do in the room but salute the client and leave the suite. Following the man with his eyes while wearing a placid, fake smile reserved for such mundane situations, the teenager went to insure the entry door was locked and secured for the night before slowly walking on painfully cramped legs to sit for his meal.
He did quick work of the pea soup, realizing after only two spoons just how hungry and tired he was. Despite all his best efforts, he still had not managed to find a way to survive on coffee and teen stubbornness alone. - Snort! - Any plans for an evening shower were forgotten as he figured he had enough energy to eat the entire meal and trudge to bed, if only barely awake along the way. The warmth of the soup and buttered bread roll did wake him a bit but the weight of the warm chewy meat settled heavily in the pit of his gut, giving him a satisfying sensation that initiated drowsiness and made his eyes droop. Plowing mechanically through the excellently cooked food with more teenaged stubbornness than real appetite anymore, the young man forced himself to finish everything, including the cake and last drops of coffee in the mug.
After piling everything in the tray, he hobbled with the lot in hand on unsteady legs over to the kitchen counter next to the sinks where he laid out the tray and soiled dishes for house keeping to pick up when they passed their rounds. Without any other sorts of preparations, he shut the ceiling lights across the entire suite then padded to the bedroom, intent on reaching the actual bed before the large couch in the living area called out to him. Having a nap on the wide sectional besides the huge fireplace seemed sooo comfortable... No! He had a bed waiting for him, just a few feet to the left... He could nap in the living room another day when everything was setup and running.
Finally seated on the bed, he took off his sneakers, socks, shirt and jeans with everything that had filled his pockets or traveler's belt going into the locking drawer of the nightstand. Stripped down to his ordinary square-cut black boxers, the boy pulled the sheets back just enough to slide underneath and pulled them back up to his neck, his thin meatless body having gotten chilled by the short amount of time he spent undressed. In the deep nighttime darkness of the bedroom, the warm reddish light emanating gently from the cast iron insert in the fireplace in front of the bed made a pleasant atmosphere conducive to peace of mind and sleep. Soon, the teenager was sound asleep, the day's travels, weariness and work having finally taken their toll on him. He would wake up fully refreshed in the morning early enough for a long hot bath, breakfast and the meeting with his new lawyers.
Wrath
(Lord of the Rings – Uruk-Hai war march)
West Africa; Friday 18th of December, 2020; 10:06am
West America; Friday 18th of December, 2020; 00:06am (midnight)
World Power Plant Project; management office
South Africa, western coast near Cape Town
An angry burst of swears accompanied the sound of breaking glass as Lawrence reamed out the 'child runaway & delinquent recovery expert' on the vidphone on his desk. The uppity mongrel was a damned low-born mercenary just like all the others, and it didn't count for fuckshit in Lawrence's books that the man didn't have the balls to look at his own perverse evil in the face. If the weakling coward insisted on being called facetious titles and water-down his job description so he could walk in public without having the cops after his lying hide, then he could do it on his own clock, without Lawrence there to endure the displays of cowardice and spinelessness.
The felonious technician yelled at the vidphone's image "I want MEN to do this job, not goddamned male versions of Mary Poppins! He deserves a beat down by armed cops, not a nanny with a pacifier! Get some real men with real guns and BREAK the defective little retard so he knows his MASTER once and for all! I have A DEAL with your bishop over at the cathedral that you will do this in exchange for money and services provided to the Church so their missionary works can spread. Do YOU want to inform the 'Honorable Faithful Lord Bishop' that his plans and lofty ambitions are stalled because I refuse to pay for YOUR subpar counter-performances?"
The man on the other end of the comms sighed in despondent contempt for the piece of human crap that had called him after referral by the Church of Jesus the Redeemer of Blighted Souls in Tempa, Florida, USA. Him and his team of ex soldiers & cops had been doing jobs for the HFL Bishop Brady Khunestade and the church's juvenile reform boot camp, but never of this sort before. This was a clear plan for destroying the body and soul of a child by his father for no reason other than the parent was an utter bastard, and a cowardly, menial one at that. Still, the damned bishop owned their balls with the blackmail material he had on each member of the team so they had little choice in the matter. The kid would have to watch out for himself, if he could.
Putting on the most insincere expression he knew how to make, the mercenary responded glibly: "Don't worry your purrty widdle head, old bean... We'll find the kid in whatever hole he's dug himself. Then the guys will show him the better value of docility and submission to your will. If he gets broken bones and scars along the job, t'his fault for not obeying in the first place." He finished with a patently fake wan smile aimed at Lawrence that the engineer was just too angry, or dense, to see through.
"Fine. Get it done and send me the films and physical proofs of completion. If I LIKE the results, I might send your team a bonus directly. If not, I have a trip to NCQ in 22 days; I would have to make a detour by Tempa to speak with HFL Bishop Khunestade about the lack of faith, belief and undiscipline of his followers in his Great Crusade of the Pure Americans. Understood?" Lawrence commanded imperiously at the man who could no doubt kill him with bare hands if he wanted to but was too cowardly to go against his ecclesiastic overlord to be any threat.
Not waiting for any answers, the criminal father closed the comms and leaned back in his plush, genuine stallion leather chair. He began to rock back and forth gently as he imagined the look of fear and panic on the face of the ill-aborted little piss-stain of a procreate that served him for a son.
It would be glorious for HIM, the powerful adult, for a change in this damned life.
The tremors of fear that wracked his left arm in time to the minuscule palpitation in his thorax was ignored and not even perceived. Otherwise, Lawrence would have to admit that the events of 2 years back had scared, and scarred, him much more than he was willing to admit, especially to his own self.
The beating may have almost handicapped Lucas, but the child's defense and retaliation had almost killed Lawrence, coming close to destroying his eyes, nose, mouth and one ear on the left side. The millions of credits he had to swindle out of WPP's accounts to pay for reconstructive surgeries followed by more plastic interventions didn't bear thinking about. Ever.
After that wet-dream of parental domination was finished and done with, he would simply have to make a minor side deal with Will Noyce to make suffer that cowardly cur lieutenant Denalt. Ruining the traitor's undeserved career for daring to deny Lawrence his due respect and obedience should be enough vengeance for that case.
{ SQ } - { PREVIEW ch.4 } - { SQ }
Setting up the defensive paranoid reality and illnesses that Lucas lives with every day. A lot of new formidable weaponry and gear comes into play, the teenager's phantom bot-net gets organized for defense and the companies start proving their uses.
Lucas dives in the Web's darker areas to evaluate an incoming threat he was warned about.
The canadian lawyers come on the gameboard. Lucas' entire 16 years of misery, pain and shame are revealed to light. The lengthy expose of his academics, diplomas and iconic creations is given, and several details of his misbegotten ancestry come to light with even more wealth, power and threats.
The depravity of Cynthia and Lawrence is exposed in crude details, as are their methods and allies.
CNN carries the story of the teenager's attempted enslavement with many experts to back it up. The DXS (Department of External Services) with MacGyver's crew comes into the story by the side-door, as do NCIS and the FBI. The other agencies concerning law-enforcement and counter-terrorism are not far behind them.