Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan (read book .txt) 📕

Back at the motel they planned for the actual dangerous part. Or, if not dangerous, then at least the part where getting caught was hardest to explain. Bee made a duplicate security card that would get them in the front door. Meanwhile, the hacker team back in San Jose tore through the CRG system, looking for anything and everything that might be helpful. With the Trojan Horse in place, they had free reign over the company’s internal network and its Web site. They began to inch up the database figures for the comics they planned to forge. A search through employee e-mails turned up a current alarm code that someone had foolishly sent to another employee. They also had everyone’ schedules. It was Friday night, and no one was expected to come in on Saturday, so they should be safe, but they wanted to be out before dawn just in case.

This next part of the operation belonged to Filo. He was a pretty cool guy, Paul had decided. He hadn’t spent much time with him before the trip down to LA, but he’d grown to like the tattooed, shaven headed Crew member. Filo’s main skill set was in sculpture and metal fabrication. He was also a gear head, fixing (and maybe stealing) cars in his spare time. He’d spent a good chunk of time examining how the plastic cases went together and watching the video Paul had taken inside the facility, and seemed confidant that he could duplicate the process pretty easily. 

They went back at 11:00 PM, a half hour after the maid service’s scheduled clean up was finished. Everything looked clear, so they pulled the van around behind the building and unloaded the boxes of fake comics. Then Chloe came around front and used Bee’s new security card to open the door. The alarm code worked, and they were in. She opened the loading door out back and Raff and Filo started carrying boxes back towards the sealing room.

Paul had wanted to go with them into the building to help put the fakes together, but both Chloe and Raff had vetoed this plan. He’d done well earlier, definitely, but this was precision breaking and entering work they were doing now. They couldn’t afford any screw-ups. Besides, they needed a lookout, and that meant Paul. He drove the van to the other side of the street where he could see anyone approaching and begrudgingly stood watch.

In his head he imagined what was going on inside. They’d have made their way into the sealing room by now. The room had no windows that faced the street, so he couldn’t tell if they were set up and running or not. The CRG guy had told him that they locked up the valuable comics in safes each night, so there wasn’t much chance that they’d be tempted to steal anything. Not that he thought they would. This whole plan centered on the idea that no one would ever realize that a crime had been committed. The hacker team had already gone in and changed the inventory numbers in CRG’s computer to account for the missing plastic cases and sleeves. They’d even accounted for the ink the Crew would be using to print their forged rating inserts and the holograms that marked them as official CRG graded books.

Paul had Chloe’s cell phone on speed dial, ready to make the call as soon as anything happened that looked like it might blow their cover. He had a moment of panic three hours into the operation when an old-school Camero he’d seen on his earlier visit pulled into the parking lot. He was about to make the call when he saw the driver go into the office next door. He called Chloe anyway, just to let her know. 

“Go,” she said as she answered the call.

“You don’t need to get out or anything, but I thought you should know that there’s somebody at work in the office next door. I don’t know what he’s doing in there, but make sure you keep quiet or whatever.”

“Thanks. Make sure you let me know if he’s still there when we’re ready to leave.”

“How’s everything going in there?”

“Good. Gotta go.” And she hung up. Definitely all business when it came to pulling these jobs. 

Paul waited for several uneventful hours, sitting in the van and trying to stay awake. He must have drifted off to sleep at least once because he woke with a start to the sound of the Camero’s throaty engine firing to life around 2:30 in the morning. The excitement of the entire venture had begun to wear off by this point and he was just feeling totally exhausted. He was tired of sleeping on couches and in the backs of vans. He’d never tried a waterbed before and wondered for a sleepy while what that might be like.

In order to stay awake he turned on the map light and started thumbing idly through a copy of Wizard Magazine he’d brought along. Devoted to comics news and collecting, the magazine also contained a price guide in the back of every issue. He flipped to the section on indie publishers and found the entry for the comic-book that had defined his career – Metropolis 2.0. Issue 1 in top condition was going for $12. Up a few dollars since the videogame had been announced. Paul sighed and turned off the light, realizing that with it on, he could be seen from the street.

He’d been working as a freelance artist in the comic book industry for just shy of three years when he had the idea for Metropolis 2.0. Inspired by the Fritz Lang movie rather than Superman’s fictional home, the comic told the story of alienated robotic workers fighting against a tyrannical utopian system in their quest to gain equal rights. This quest involved a great number of epic, robot vs. cyborg battles, elaborate twists and turns, and as much dark humor as Paul could reasonably cram into each twenty-two page issue. But since he could only work on it in his spare time, he was having trouble just finishing that first issue.

Paul had built up his portfolio working for various second and third tier publishing companies. He’d drawn a lot of comics based on movies and TV shows and even some video-game tie-in work. After thus establishing himself, both of the big two comic book companies, Marvel and DC, expressed an interest in hiring him, a break that was almost every penciler’s dream. But Paul had become obsessed with seeing Metropolis 2.0 in print, and so he pitched the book to the two comics companies. Both publishers turned him down, and in the process he managed to lose his chance to work for them as well. They wanted eager young artists whose sole ambition was drawing the X-Men or Batman, not a headstrong would-be auteur who just wanted to work on his own projects.

Frustrated, Paul did the only thing he could to get the damn comic printed – he applied for as many credit cards as he could, dropped his other freelance gigs, and threw everything he had into publishing his comic book on his own. After a year of eating Ramen noodles and oatmeal every day, no one was more surprised than Paul when his comic became a hit. It never did X-Men numbers of course, but he got a lot of good buzz as he went out on the convention circuit to pimp his comic. He was soon selling close to 15,000 copies a month – a huge number for an independent book. He’d become the new golden boy of underground comics and had never been happier in his life.

After sixteen months, the monthly grind started to wear him down. Writing and illustrating twenty-two pages is a huge amount of effort and the grueling labor took its toll. While the comic was doing better than ever, Paul just wanted a break. At the same time, he didn’t want to hire on another artist because he didn’t trust anyone with his baby. And that’s when he and Greg had had their fateful conversation. They both agreed that Metropolis 2.0 would make the perfect setting for an online computer game. Together with the other partners, they formed Fear and Loading. Greg invested the money, and Paul invested his ideas, turning over ownership of the Metropolis intellectual property and copyrights to the new company. Obviously that hadn’t worked out as planned, and now he didn’t even own his own creation. But at least he’d made them pay dearly for taking it away from him.

The phone buzzed on the dashboard, startling him out of his half-conscious reverie. It was Chloe. He concentrated hard so he didn’t sound as sleepy as he really was.

“Go,” he said, mimicking Chloe’s response from earlier.

“We’re ready. Is it all clear?”

“Yeah, Camero-guy’s gone.” It was now pushing 5:00 AM. “Should I pull the van around?”

“Yep. Come on back.” She clicked off. 

They loaded the boxes into the van. Paul got out to help and noticed that there were more boxes coming into the van than they’d taken out originally. “What’s with the extra boxes?”

“It’s always the little things that get ya,” said Chloe. “We didn’t calculate right on how bulky these things would be once we’d sealed them in these hard plastic sleeves. We couldn’t fit them all into the boxes we brought, so we had to snag a few from their warehouse here.”

Paul was surprised at how anxious this made him feel. Everything had gone so perfectly; even this small mistake suddenly filled him with nervousness. “What if someone notices?”

“Hopefully they won’t – it’s just boxes after all. Not much we can do about it now.” She and Raff loaded the last box into the van. “I’ll reactivate the alarm and then meet you out front. Call the hacker team and have them do what they can about resetting the entrance and exit logs for the door and the security system. No one ever checks those things, but I want it done before they open up again, just in case.”

A minute later and they were on the road, headed back north towards San Jose. They were all too tired for much celebrating, and the van was now overflowing with boxes and technical equipment. Within twenty minutes of hitting the highway, the whole Crew had passed out, leaving Paul to fight off sleep as he drove up the I-10. He was kind of exhilarated and relieved that it was over. Soon the excitement faded and he was starting to yawn. Soon he felt more like a delivery driver than a thief. 

By the time they got back to San Jose, everyone in the van had perked up quite a bit. They stopped for coffee just outside of town and called to let the rest of the crew know that they were on their way back in. Even in his sleep deprived state, Paul found the excitement in the van contagious. Like the rest of them, he was in the mood to brag and crow a bit and, thanks to his role as the face-man, he figured the group might start accepting him as one of their own.

Once they’d loaded the boxes into the house they started unpacking them. A few of the hackers and the e-Slaves were already in the Server Room, so the triumphant road team had a ready-made audience for their stories. Things got especially fun when Chloe pulled out a comic book price guide and started verbally calculating their potential profits. 

“Here we have Ultimate Spider-man, graded a 9.6 – a little generous I think. I’d give it a 9.2 myself, but you guys should be able to sell it for $180.00 at