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!

Twenty minutes later, after he’d put away his laptop and accompanying gear, Valerie and her two goons escorted him to a suite on the top floor.

“Nice view, huh?” she said after unfurling the drapes.

Julian wanted to agree. He nodded to signify as much, but he only saw burned desert below, dotted with the homes and buildings that dared break the landscape’s monotony.

“You live close?” he asked, aiming to postpone the uncomfortable part of the conversation.

She shrugged. “I could lie and tell you I did.”

So, she wasn’t with the tribe, he almost noted. But that would make him the one that got them closer to that awkward discussion.

“Just as well,” he said. “It gets really hot here.”

“That’s why God invented air conditioning, isn’t it?” She winked at him. “But here I start searching for all sorts of dumb puns about air conditioning and air-gapped thingies.”

He turned away from her. A look around the room, its living room area, the large bed beyond… He could find no escape in any of it. They caught him. Dead to rights. Now he had to come up with a way out. A deal of some sort.

“I can pay,” he said. “I’ll pay it all back.”

“Do you even know how much you’re into, Julian?”

He shook his head. Nope. No idea. Tapping on the phone and keeping good records didn’t add up to the same thing.

“Yeah. Tough, huh? But actually, it’s about the offense of it,” she said. “I mean, my bosses and my associates aren’t so much into the money aspect of it. But what you did. Now, that’s something.”

She gestured for him to take a seat. As soon as he did, they heard a knock on the door. One of the goons rolled in a room service cart. Tip already taken care of, he said. Valerie nodded at him. He nodded back, then stepped out. She nodded at Julian, pulled a chair and sat across from him, the food cart between them. Unfurling the side panels, she turned the cart into a table.

Over the next few minutes, she only discussed the meal. Did he want a glass of Champagne? Did he want the chicken or the steak plate? What about some butter for that roll? What kind of dressing for the side salad?

Once he settled to eat his chicken and vegetables entrée, she talked up the hotel and casino some more, as if picking up where she’d left off back when she was a shuttle driver, and he was Robert Johnson, wearing a Dodgers cap, trying to unplug and come play a little. He ate slowly, hoping to postpone a return to the business side of things. All along, he kept going back to when he’d met her, how nice she’d been to him, and how friendly she’d acted on the shuttle. The more he thought about it, the dumber he felt. Then he got angry. Something clicked inside him, and he realized. They’d set him up. And she was part of that.

“How long did you know I was coming?” he said.

She almost answered, but not quite. Instead her eyes glimmered. Her lips turned up into a cocked smile. She reached for her glass of Champagne and gulped down half of it.

“Well?”

“You know the answer,” she said.

He didn’t have to ask the rest. They’d tapped the Internet searches he’d done from his home computer. He thought he’d buttoned that up in a way that let InfoStream and the ITAA think they could keep tabs on him. But someone had seen through his cleverness. They’d seen everything he’d researched, how he’d picked this casino—the one with blackjack, and just as importantly a shuttle service. From there they did the rest. Sent this pretty young and dark thing to welcome him. They made her his shuttle driver.

He glared down at his half-consumed plate for a moment, then looked up. “What do you want from me?”

“You know the answer to that, too.”

“You want a prototype?” He waved at his backpack. “It’s all in there.”

“Hmm. OK, so maybe you don’t know.”

“This would be why I asked the question.”

She raised her eyebrows, then reached for her Champagne flute and emptied it with a downer gulp. She winced and cleared her throat.

“Well?” he said.

“You’re doing a little field test for us. A demonstration.” She wrinkled her nose for a second. “Except this time we hope you won’t be burning any popcorn.”

He thought about that for a moment. “When?”

She grinned. “Now.”

He checked his watch. It was 6:30 PM. “Where?”

Her grin morphed, to the point of malevolence. “A little place north of here.”

Julian had studied an online map of the area that morning. Scanning it now in his mind, he came to one northern location.

“The marine base?” he said.

She nodded.

“What would you want there?”

“Well, let’s see what we can find.”

Martin used fake ID throughout. Though he had an ITAA-issued fictitious passport, Cynthia and team would trace him on that as well as they would his real one. Fortunately he’d thought about a day similar to this. Well, more for himself, really, if he ever needed to make himself scarce. Either way, he’d procured a false California driver’s license which he’d used to book the airline fare from San Jose to Palm Springs, and he’d used it to also rent a car.

He arrived at High Palms Casino shortly after 8:00 PM. On the plane ride and during the relatively short drive, he’d weighed which way to approach this. As he walked into the hotel lobby after valet-parking his car, he walked right up to the reception counter with the straightest, most forceful approach in mind.

A smiling receptionist waved him over. He walked up and pulled out his ITAA badge, the one he would wear on visits to Washington, DC. With his thumb purposefully covering the word “Contractor,” he showed it to her. He let her gaze dwell on it long enough to see the federal insignia along the top of the badge. He gave her a chance to examine his photo and cross-compare against the real thing. When she looked up to ask a question, he froze her with an index finger to his lips.

“I need to speak to management, in private.”

She frowned. “What should I tell them this concerns?”

“To prevent embarrassment and a disturbance to your operation here, I rather discuss that behind closed doors.”

“Just a moment.” She exited through a door. By the time she returned a minute later, a tall, thick-chested guy in a suit came around the corner.

Martin nodded and followed him into the casino’s inner office area. Through a corridor they passed the security room and a second room with a heavily vaulted door. At the end of the hallway, a second guard met them, opening a third, red cherry door for them.

A third suit, this one with far fancier tie, suit and shoes, met Martin inside.

“Mr. Spencer, right? Call me Vincent.”

They shook hands. They sat on two plush chairs.

“How may I help you, Mr. Spencer?”

“I’ve come to retrieve someone who shouldn’t be here.”

Vincent chuckled. “Sorry. I hear that a lot, mostly from wives and mothers.”

“I’m surprised you would admit that.”

Vincent dropped his smile. “This someone have a name?”

“He might be here under a false name. But I’m guessing that in order to use his credit card, he went ahead and shared his real one. Julian Rogers.”

For a brief moment, Vincent’s brow creased. He quickly shifted to a blank, more circumspect expression.

“I’ll have to check our guest list, see if we can find this Julian…”

“Rogers. In the interest of time, I suggest you do not check the guest list. Because you don’t have to.”

“State your business, Mr. Spencer.”

“Mr. Rogers shouldn’t be here. It’s actually illegal for him to be here. In a federal way. Might cause all manner of inconvenience and disruption to a casino that accommodates him.” Martin put up his hand. “Now, it doesn’t have to get to that. I sure don’t want it to. Too much paperwork, right?” He tried to smile.

Vincent didn’t return the smile, but at least he nodded back. “I’m listening.”

“Help me locate Mr. Rogers, we settle up his account, in full, plus… incidentals. And we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Settling his account may take more doing than you think.”

Martin couldn’t help it. He had to swallow, not so much because he feared a dollar amount, but because he wasn’t looking forward to the gymnastics he would have to swing to conceal the expenditure from Cynthia.

“How much?” he said, surprising himself with how sure and even his voice sounded.

“Going on a quarter mil.”

Martin nodded. “That should not be an issue.”

Vincent leaned forward to rest elbows on knees. “Thing is, someone’s already offered to settle Mr. Roger’s account.”

“Really?”

“Oh, I only deal in real, Mr. Spencer.”

Martin couldn’t help it. He had to swallow again.

“I’m not MacGyver, all right?” Julian said to Valerie. “We can’t do this tonight. We need to go back, figure out how to rig the first radio to talk to my computer, and then we can start thinking about—”

“It’s tonight, Julian. Unless you’re telling me your little thing doesn’t really work.”

Julian looked through the van’s windshield. There, in the desert darkness beyond the nearby street lights, stood his mark. His target.

He sighed, not caring how childishly exasperated he sounded. They’d been at this over the last hour, a quarter mile outside the entrance into the Twentynine Palms Marine base. She’d showed him on the map where the power station was located. She’d handed him a couple of drones, three radios, some wire, and said, here get it all to play together.

“It will work if I have some time to integrate it and test it,” he said. “Not on the fly like this.”

“I thought you said it could be done remotely, with antennas instead of coiled wire.”

“Theoretically, yes, it can. But not—”

“So, you’re going to fail, just like that.”

He shook his head. There she went again. What was this now? Like the tenth time she’d razzed him about his ability? Thing was, as much as he saw through it, each challenge hurt a little more. Yeah, he had to prove her wrong. Even if he knew she was playing him, it felt like she was pressing an irresistible button.

Julian looked around the van’s interior and reviewed what he had again. His laptop, the current generator-emitter, and the unwound orange wire. That much felt like a toy, like a plaything he’d used to amuse himself. But now he had two drones and three radios. The idea was to use one radio, tethered to the computer, to port data to the other radio, the one that would ride on the drone. Then he’d fly that drone over to the power station and use it like a virtual coil wire to generate the electromagnetic field that would in turn drive a current into the power lines. And he’d use that current to transmit a pulse train onto whatever computers fed from the power source. Like that. Simple. But not even close to a workable prototype. He did need time to come up with an implementation and test it before he took it live.

He also knew the end product this time wouldn’t come in a bag of popcorn or a spoofed cash transaction.

“We can go back to the casino,” she said. “Explain to my friends how you couldn’t come through. Which means I can’t come through for you. Which leaves you on the hook for a large bill, and maybe even landing on the wrong side of thick bars with a big horny guy for a bunk mate.”

Julian took a deep breath. He had to make this work. Last thing he needed? Getting caught by the InfoStream and ITAA crew.

“I do this here, for you, and I go down,” he said.

“Is that why you’re stalling?” the driver said. “Because I wouldn’t want to get that impression. I’m not pleasant when I get the wrong impression.”

Valerie gestured to the driver, like one making peace. “Now, now, let’s all settle down. Julian’s going to come through, aren’t you, Julian?”

Julian looked at all the pieces. He could make this work. Maybe. Well, he better. He had no better choice. The point to say, no, thanks? He’d left that an hour and a half ago, back at the casino. Why he’d jumped into this crazy ride, Julian couldn’t tell. All part of the random fabric. He’d gone with his gut, which at the time had told him, yeah, Valerie was cool. He should go with her instead of sticking with the Martin Spencer, InfoStream bore-fest.

He picked up a radio and saw how to tie it physically to the drone. No need to wire them up. He only needed to talk to the radio when it came time for data transfers. The drone could fly through its own guided interface. He took the other drone and radio pair. A concept took shape. He nodded. Yeah, he could make this work.

“Got a new idea?” Valerie said.

“It might work better flying both drones.” He caught her smirk. “But you knew that.”

She raised her hands, palms out. “Hey, you’re the expert here.”

Now came the hard part: how to turn the third radio into a data interface. Which really meant, how would he capture the magnetic field the remote, on-drone radios captured and bring it back to turn it into data? This is where he’d gotten stuck before, and he got stuck there again. He needed more time.

“We got company,” the driver said.

“Who?” Valerie replied.

He shrugged. From the look on his face, he didn’t seem terribly concerned. Valerie, on the other hand… She frowned, at the driver, at Julian, back at the driver.

A door slammed outside. From the looks the driver gave his side mirror, Julian could tell they were coming on that side. Cops, maybe?

“You need to bring him back,” a man said.

Julian recognized the voice. It belonged to one of the casino security goons.

Valerie went forward and turned to face the driver’s side window. “We’re not done here.”

“You are. Boss says deal’s off.”

“Why?”

“Not my place to say.”

“I’m paying off his—”

“Not anymore. Boss’s orders.”

She shook her head and hissed something foul under her breath.

“Oh, and he says he brings his computer. And any copies you’ve made.”

Julian swallowed. He stared at Valerie, now turned halfway toward him. She shot him a nasty glare, like she was visualizing pain and how best to inflict it.

“Fine,” she said. “Get your crap and scram.”

Next thing Julian knew, he was standing on the sidewalk, holding his backpack like a sack of potatoes. The van door was slamming. The van was pulling away. And a guy in a suit was grabbing him by the arm to pull toward a black SUV.