Ahead of its August 27 release in my Random Origins short story collection, I will preview Cyber Radio for my readers as part of my ongoing #SaturdayScenes initiative. Make sure you join my Reader’s Club to get the other free stories I offer to my subscribers, and to get further notifications regarding the release of Random Origins and future stories!

By the time Julian arrived in Ontario International Airport, the one in California, his wad of cash had shrunk to seven hundred and fifty dollars. Though he could afford it, renting a car wouldn’t do. Doing so would require ID and a credit card. Plus all those cars had some sort of electronic, roadside “assistance” interface. All that would get him tracked down. Once the InfoStream and ITAA goons started digging, they would learn in ten minutes flat—if that long—that he’d come through this airport. But he didn’t want them to figure out where he’d gone from here. He wanted them to sweat that part out.

But he needed transportation. His intended destination, the High Palms Casino, awaited him in the Coachella desert, an hour and a half away. How would he get there? During his quick online research, he’d learned the casino ran a twice daily shuttle from and to the airport. The next one was leaving at noon. It was now 11:10 AM. He had time.

After exiting the plane, he spied a trinket shop. An array of sports caps took up half of its display window. Yeah, if he really knew anything about what he was doing, he would have brought one of his, wouldn’t he? Whatever. He stepped in and grabbed a Dodgers cap. After paying way too much for it, he jumped into the nearest restroom. In there, he took off his black jacket to reveal the white T-shirt he wore underneath. He took off his jeans and replaced them with olive green cargo shorts. Next he took the Dodgers cap, yanked off its price tag, ripped off the dumb flashy stickers and put it on. It felt stiff and tight going on. He adjusted it, bent the bill some, until it fit better.

Now for his next trick. The video feed outside the bathroom had to die. If it showed a guy coming out instead of him, they would tag his disguise, and they would trace him to his casino ride. He took out his laptop and a gadget and wire rig like the one he’d used to hack the microwave. He eyed the toilet’s automatic flusher. A red dot blinked back at him. That meant power lines fed it, from the same power grid that fed the cameras. Time to go from theory to practical application.

He coiled the wire around the flushing device as best he could, then powered up his laptop. The app he launched started scanning for residue frequencies. Finding the one to hone in on took him five minutes he didn’t have. But he found it. Soon he decoded the video. It played choppy and somewhat garbled, but that would do. He wasn’t after Hi-Def content. He wanted to kill the thing. That took another couple of minutes of decoding signals until he got to the camera’s control lines. A couple of tries later, and the video died. He shrugged. OK, the rest he’d have to do by keeping his head down.

Before leaving the stall, along with the laptop and emitter gadget, he stuffed his jeans and jacket into his backpack, then pulled out the pack’s retractable handle and rolled it out.

He checked himself in the mirror. Well, he wasn’t a spy, but that looked like as good a transformation as any. Between that and the fact that he wasn’t strapping a backpack to his back, it should do, right? He should look different enough to fool the next video feed. Whatever. He’d find out soon enough.

After exiting through the one-way security doors, Julian walked through the baggage claim and found the shuttle sign-in booth just where the casino’s website had placed it.

He stepped up and said, “Hi, looking for a ride to the casino.”

“Do you have a reservation?” the gal behind the counter said.

Of course he didn’t. That would leave more digital breadcrumbs. “Ah… I thought this is where you pay for the ticket.”

“It is. Just wondering if you had a reservation.” She smiled. “First question in the checklist.” She winked at him.

“Uh… OK. Guess not. I don’t have one, I mean. A reservation.”

Her smile broadened.

Julian felt his face warm up.

“Here,” she said. “Sign in for me. Name and cell number, if you have it.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Cell number in case we need to call you before we leave.”

Well, he’d make sure they wouldn’t need that. Julian swallowed. The pen shook in his hand as he took it. He stared down at the empty sign-in sheet. His name would appear at the very top of it. God, he was really doing this? He steadied himself long enough to jot down his pseudonym. Robert Johnson. He scribbled a totally made-up cell number. Would she ask for ID? He’d bust wide open then, wouldn’t he?

He looked up.

“That’ll be sixty dollars,” she said.

He reached for his wallet. “Yeah, sure.” He handed her three twenties.

“A cash man,” she said, giving him a wry smile.

“It is king, like they say.”

She gave him a coquettish shrug, then pointed at a door to his right. “Shuttle leaves from there. I see you don’t have much luggage.” She nodded at his roller backpack, now propped against his leg. “Just be there five minutes before twelve.”

“Cool.” He went to go.

Her extended hand stopped him. “My name’s Valerie.”

He shook her hand.

“I’ll be your driver. Five to twelve, OK?”

“Awesome.”

He checked his watch. He had about twenty minutes to kill. Not knowing where else to go, he wove his way to the door and stood by it. That would ensure Valerie didn’t have to call the fake cell number he wrote down.

After trying and failing to spot the surveillance cameras, he pushed down the brim of his cap as low as it would go.

The shuttle pulled up at ten before twelve. On its side, the casino’s name and insignia glistened in bright, reflective gold. Julian looked over at the booth. Valerie still stood there. She caught him glancing at her and gave him a smiling wave. Julian waved back, then turned back toward the shuttle. A thick, tall dude stepped from it onto the curb. He looked to his left, then his right, and started heading toward Julian.

“You going to the casino?”

“Uh, yeah.” Julian took a half step back before he realized he was shrinking from the guy.

“Luggage?”

“Uh, none, actually.”

“Hmm.” The guy stared at Julian through dark sunglasses. “OK.” He brushed by Julian and stepped inside, to relieve Valerie, Julian hoped.

Sure enough, after a quick changing of the guard chat, she came toward Julian.

“Well, let’s go, Robert. Those thousand dollar chips are getting lonely.”

Before he knew it, he and Valerie were inside the shuttle, with the air conditioning blowing at hurricane speed. Valerie shut the door, saying something about keeping the shuttle cool and having to make sure no other last minute customers came.

None did, and Julian found himself as the one and only passenger. Valerie pulled away two minutes after twelve. She did her thing and stayed silent while she maneuvered out of the airport, and kept to herself until they’d joined the eastbound 10 Freeway.

“So what’s your thing, Robert?”

“My thing?”

“Your game. What do you like to play?”

“Oh, mostly blackjack.”

“No poker?”

“Nah.”

“We have some great poker action going on.”

He shrugged. “Hmm. Not for me.”

“How come?”

Not random enough, he wanted to say. Too tied to skill. “Don’t have much of a poker face,” he said.

She laughed. “You know. I kind of see that.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She nodded. Her eyes smiled at him through the rearview mirror. “It’s all fun, right? Just relax and have fun. If not, why do it, right?”

He pointed at her. “True word.”

“Yeah, Robert. True word.”

They drove in silence for another thirty minutes. Julian welcomed the break in the conversation. He let himself go into a bit of a haze before he started working through what he’d need to do. To comfort himself, he unzipped the backpack and made sure he had everything he needed, namely his laptop and all the attachments that went with it. Dumb, really, to do it now. If he left something in the airport’s restroom, that was that. But this helped him, to take inventory of his gear and to visualize what he’d do with it next.

“I hope you didn’t bring work with you,” Valerie said.

“Huh?”

She nodded at his stuff through the rearview mirror. “Your laptop. I hope you didn’t bring it so you can stay connected with the office or any of that other nonsense.”

“Uh. No, not really.”

“Good to hear. People these days, they don’t get that. How we all need to unplug.” She waved at the road ahead. “That’s why I like it out here, you know? You can unplug. What do they call it these days? Going off-grid, right?”

Julian sat up a little straighter.

“You know what I mean, right? We’re always on our phones, on the net, on TV. God. A bunch of electronic leashes, right? All of them wrapped around our necks.” With her right hand, she made like she was choking herself. “We’re a bunch of slaves, you know? All of us on the grid, of our own choosing, too. And they say the Matrix is science fiction. Yeah, right. More real than we think, right?”

“I guess I see your point.”

“Good. Because I think you’re going to like it here. None of the super buzz of Vegas or Reno or Atlantic City, though that’s pretty dead these days, in a depressing way. Just down to earth fun here. Concerts every night. Good service. No snootiness. And lots of great gaming.”

Julian couldn’t help it and had to say, “Wow, nice pitch there.”

She shrugged. “Hey, it’s the truth.”

He hesitated for a moment. “You native?”

“Native?” She shook her head smiled. “You mean am I a tribe member?”

He had to break eye contact with her. “Yeah.”

“I kind of am.”

“That’s cool.”

Her shoulders went up in another shrug, and her smile beamed at him through the rearview mirror. “I like my job. It’s pretty nice, not having to deal with the nine-to-five nonsense out there.”

“It pays well, I take it?”

“Sure. Well enough.”

Thanks to saps like him, Julian didn’t say. Except this time he wouldn’t act like one. Not so much.

Julian checked into the hotel with his ID, but insisted on paying cash. A one night stay unless the spirit led him to linger a little longer. By which he meant, if he got on a good roll, which he had every intention of doing. OK, the front desk dude said. Let them know by nine the next morning if he wanted to extend his stay.

Julian headed for the elevators. Five minutes later, he entered his room. It didn’t amount to much, and it wouldn’t matter. He didn’t plan to spend much time in it. Plus its lower location—third floor—put it that much closer to the casino’s pit and its computer systems.

As he started to set up his hack, Julian kept grinning. Of late casinos had gotten smart, air-gapping their networks—the ones that handled money—from external networks. Not easy to do, since they had to stay plugged in for credit card and bank transactions. But they got it done by shifting data back and forth between the on-grid and off-grid networks via, what else, data disks. A transaction on the outer, on-grid system, like say, a funds transfer from a bank account, would record on a disk. This disk would then go over to a standalone computer for a malware scan. Once cleared, the disk would go into the air-gapped network to record the transaction. To cash out an account, do it all in reverse, minus the unnecessary scan—since the air-gapped network was, by definition, malware-free.

Since he wasn’t planning to hand over a credit card or bank account number, Julian only needed to make that air-gapped, protected data say he had more money in his stash. Like someone had brought across a disk recording a transaction of a transfer. He’d start his stash, with say, three hundred dollars of the cash he had left. Then he’d make it grow as needed.

He coiled an orange wire around the thickest cord in the room, the one from the TV. Next, he set his laptop by the TV and finished connecting everything. The signal returns were weak and intermixed with all the other crud in those power lines. It took an hour to dial in his settings to reach the air-gapped network via the power lines. Another hour passed before he had the required linkages established. Last up on his mental checklist, he made sure he could talk to his laptop from his phone.

Ten minutes later, he walked up to the casino pit and handed his seed cash. After he stepped away, he tapped his cellphone and ran a check. Not there yet. He waited another ten minutes, checked again. Bingo. Three hundred dollars for Julian Rogers.

He ran a quick test, and waited for another five minutes. Bingo-boingo. Three hundred and fifty dollars for Julian Rogers.

He let out a long sigh. OK, he’d proven his point already. Really, he didn’t need to push it any harder. He shrugged. Of course he had to push it, and way harder. A trip all the way out here hardly justified itself for a mere fifty dollar phantom transaction.

The blackjack tables weren’t hard to find. He sat at one, played about twenty hands or so, riding it out to a near draw that had him walk away only ten dollars under. He stood up and looked around. A couple of minutes later, after coming out of the men’s restroom, he was tapping on his phone, like someone checking his Twitter feed.

“That doesn’t look unplugged.”

He looked up. Valerie stood a few feet from him, smiling.

“Or maybe I’m making sure I remember my poker rules.”

Her smile curled wider. “Oh, yeah? But what about that missing poker face?”

“Maybe being air-gapped will help me ease into it.”

“Air-gapped?” she said.

“Yeah, air-gapped. The best kind of unplugged and off-grid.” He grinned and didn’t bother tell her that for all the digital magic, the world is in fact analog. And in an analog world, nothing’s off-grid.