Magic World (working title): Chapter 10 part 7

The gear selection process for a trip like the one Gary was about to take was a long drawn out affair, and normally he would try to make sure that he had exactly everything he would need to complete the assigned task.

But time was of the essence and he couldn't afford to hedge over whether or not the quad-copter drone would actually be needed. He had been in enough situations where it had been useful, and too many where it would have been useful if only he'd had it, so it came.  Same went for the rest of his gear, from scanners, to oddball interface adapters, to arcane CPU software, there was always a possibility that something would come in handy.

Hacking, after all, was not just done on computers, it was a process that began, and ended with people, and how they dealt with computers. Therefore anything you could do with a computer, you had to know how that would affect the user.

Which is why he had The Van. He called her Buttercup.

She was a white Plain Jane on the outside, but like with most ladies, it was what was on the inside that really counted. Not only was there a state-of-the-art system with every wireless connection method known to man, and a few he had come up with himself that were beyond ridiculous.

But that didn't mean that outside was all bad. The sides had e-paper panels which allowed him to display any logo for any business he wanted, real or imaginary, and there was an automated license plate changing system, with plates for all 50 states, and duplicates of some, like Illinois, California, Florida, or New York.

He smiled at her contentedly, then opened the back door and secured the tub of gear he'd brought into the parking garage from his apartment. Then he walked around to the front of the cab, and climbed up to the seat, which as usual for the smaller races, was raised a little along with the pedals. He set the GPS, and drove the van out of the parking garage, then activated the auto-drive. He'd had to work a little harder to liberate the tech specs and the program from the current owners, as of course they were an internet company, but the task was not insurmountable, and in the meantime he'd uncovered a few exploits in their firewalls, and in their operating system software.

When he'd given them that information, anonymously of course, then told them what it was he had copied, he promised not to give the info away, nor sell it, but only to keep it for personal use, if in exchange they promised to keep providing him with software updates.

Sometimes it helped to be a Digital Native in the Internet Age.