Renee Faith. Renee Faith. Hello, I'm Renee. Renee Faith...

Anna, now Renee, had cleaned as much of her exposed skin as she could with the wipes, and it felt glorious. The light moisture of the cloth and the hint of lavender scent had re-energized her confidence in a way she hadn't expected, and hadn't felt in a long while.

CATCH UP: PART I

The woman who left the bathroom at the Light Rail Terminal in Hackensack looked nothing like the homeless woman who had slunk in, in fact was no longer that woman, the Anna woman. She was Renee Faith, according to her new Idents.

She wore the pale pink blouse with half sleeves that Simon had left in the bag, and had found a little makeup in the front pocket. Her cheeks were rosy and her lips pursed in a shiny apple red as she tried to grow comfortable with the lipstick.

No one bothered her as she made her way to the bus station to board the Express to Edgewater, a town that hugged the Hudson River and overlooked much of the Manhattan Skyline from along the west.

Her new look had not gone unnoticed, however, and she was asked for ident papers before she would be allowed to board the bus. Maybe it was the shoes, she was still wearing worn light gray converse but had hoped they'd be seen as a fashion statement instead of the hand me down it was. Impoverished chic, or Impov-chic the magazines call it.

Fortunately, Simon made good on the Ident papers so she was allowed on, and the ride was a long slow one that swung gently and thrummed deep into Anna's, Renee's, bones as the titanic vehicle turned, braked and accelerated. She soon felt drowsy and rested her eyes.

She felt the vehicular behemoth slow, and jumped up in surprise when she realized this was Russell Place! She left the bus and quickly made her way past Russell Place on foot, scanning for Black Gates. It did not take long to find them.

Ten minutes later, a white Sedan pulled out of the residential garage on Russell Place and took a left on River Road. Inside, Renee got to know Mixxy and Max, a sister team involved with Simon and this extraction project. Ten minutes after that they were on a highway headed west when the mobile phone chirped in her bag.

She cleared her throat and answered the phone in a cheery voice. "Hey Mom! What's up?"

"How was your trip?"

"Aw, I love you too. Tell Dad I said Hi! Okay, bye!"

The line went dead and she returned the device to her bag

They drove on, Mixxy at the wheel and Max eyeing rearview and side mirrors in a rhythmic pattern, up, side, forward, up side forward.

Mixxy spoke up first. "Do you have a Steemit or Busy Account?"

"Yes." She hadn't known the name she would receive until Simon had given her the Ident Papers, but she had already built her online identity through Steemit.

She used to hand write posts, markdown and all, and sneak onto public computers in libraries around the city, quickly transcribing the writing to an offline.txt file and then copy/pasting to the online editor when ready. She'd quickly peck at the keyboard, entering in her credentials and posting key from memory and would hit Post. She'd clean up her digital footprint, log off and slip away all within five minutes, and no one ever noticed the homeless.

In a relatively short time after joining Steemit, she had earned enough to afford an extraction seat on this contract, and on through The Divide. She wasn't sure what it'd be like, but she knew it'd be better than the dying economy that forced her to criminal activity here, that had stolen her hope.

More importantly, she had learned how to manage this extraction through the platform, and had made friends of sorts through comments when she was able to quickly fit some in between lapses in access.

"Good..." Max reached under her seat and pulled a tablet up onto her lap, a long black cord connected at the base snaked back underneath the seat, to a device hidden under a false floor she called a Kingfisher.

"See all this traffic.." she indicated to the traffic around them on the highway, six lanes on either side of slow moving vehicles. "Think of all those mobile devices sitting in ashtrays or in laps mostly unused because driving and touching a phone is illegal," She depressed a button on the case of the tablet and the screen sprang to life, a feed already brimming with service.

"Maybe you heard of the Stingray, the device that law enforcement uses to mimic cell phone towers and have mobile signals connect to them so they can filter their data? Well, think of this as the mobile version, best for use in heavy traffic areas. Think LA..." She hesitated. "Back...before." An unease hung in the cabin of the sedan, unintended but nevertheless palpable.

Mixxy spoke from behind the wheel "Basically, the device Simon gave you should be active now, and by default set to a safe to use web browser. The Kingfish scatters the connection among all vehicles in a 200 meter radius, so any idle mobile phones in the zone are redirected and become part of a Sharded Network. Trying to track that will send them looking for several hundred people who all would have accessed that particular connection at the same time. Randomly, in traffic. Theoretically, if they were watching at the right time, they'd see it as a scattered signal beeping it's way along a path, for as long as the device was active and within range of an unused, available mobile running commercial OS's."

Max spoke up again "So you're safe to check messages or have encrypted chats, as long as there are many vehicles or cell tower clusters around."

Renee had never had much experience with chat, having lived for so long, illegal gig to illegal gig. Her posting was a rebellious guerrilla act, the inevitable lashing out of a disaffected human driven to criminality through over-legislation of the human condition. The response she received on the platform was enormous, and wholly unexpected. But she never had had the time to chat, and had purchased the extraction package through encrypted emails and VPN tunnels.

What would she even say? Though she had never used it, she entered her encrypted chat key and username in, again by memory: @theunlost - almost immediately a notification request for encrypted chat flashed on the screen.

The filter read that there was only one account in the chat: @hammerhead - TEXTRACTION CARE REP. She accepted the chat as the sedan inched along the traffic:

@hammerhead: My filter shows that you're indeed encrypted. This is a courtesy check to ensure you have been accounted for.
@theunlost: Thank you, yes, I'm fine.
@hammerhead: Per contract, the extraction team knows you only as Renee Faith. Their online identity, as well as yours, has been kept anonymous as agreed. If you wish to share your identity with anyone, please do so after completion of this contract. Otherwise it could be logged as a failure and a breach.
@theunlost: that's pretty serious. Okay, I won't share and I won't inquire. Do I get to keep the mobile?
@hammerhead: Indeed, it is built into the cost. When you arrive at your destination you should be able to receive more reliable, still encrypted, service. We look forward to your successful arrival.
@theunlost: Thanks, will you be there to greet me?
@hammerhead: haha unfortunately not. Instructions will be sent automatically once the parameters of the contract have been triggered. That is, once you've been dropped off.
@hammerhead: A small studio has been provided for the next four weeks on a conditional contract that will also be sent to your encrypted email. You may choose to extend or shorten, or cancel it altogether for alternate arrangements made available by the Housing DAO.
@theunlost: I'm going to need some time, I'll accept the room. Thank you very, very much.
@hammerhead: Thank you for trusting TEXTRACTION. We will reach out soon.
@theunlost: Okay. Thanks, bye.

She put the device in her lap, unable to contain the hope that was forming in her chest, that threatened to crawl out of her as a triumphant scream of relief.

The white sedan made its way over to a bus stop along the now moving highway. She looked at her device and saw that the signal was jumping in and out of service now that traffic had begun to flow.

Simon stepped out into the road and got into the backseat, adjusting his coat and making a point to buckle his seatbelt, pointing out that Renee hadn't buckled hers. She blushed, and buckled up.

Simon smiled at her "Everything work out all right, Renee?"

"Perfect. Thank you, Simon" she smiled back at him, relief plain in her eyes.

"Great. Maxxy, how long we got?" He patted on the headrest of the driver's seat.

"It's Mixxy. We have as long as we have until we're there."

Simon laughed, "Also great. Max, would you pop on that Kingfisher, I wanna check my messages."

"Already on," Max called back, then returned to fiddling with the radio, settling on a classic rock station playing "Black Hole Sun".

Simon pulled out his mobile and made a show of turning it away from Renee "No peeking and all," winking and throwing her a winning smile.

---

Agent Jerry Boxer

Agent Boxer had always lived up to his name, a fighter who didn't surrender. He'd taken on the responsibility of the tech division as a novice, but had been finding his footing quickly. His imposing six foot stature didn't mean much in this division; it was all about tech savvy.

His work was to monitor the domestic region for illegal trading, buying and selling which usually accompanied the use of encrypted signal use. Though it sounded innocent enough, his command encompassed three MRAPS and a few SWAT units. Using cross-command channels, he could call in helicopters, local federalized units and a host of other resources to bear down on any domestic terroristic underground market that threatened the stability of the region, and by extension the country.

His latest, and biggest concern, was the rise of Kingfish and Stingray technology use among the gen pop, as they called the general public. Mobile communities had created an unregulated piece of internet that could interface with the Approved Internet, and these devices allowed pockets of dissidents to report back to their preferred communication channel. That channel was Steemit, these days.

But he had people on that, too, and they were working round the clock to establish methods to break Steemit's encryption so they could easily match user to human. Granted, they'd been on the project for a year with no discernible progress, but he planned to approach this from a different angle than his predecessors.

He was most interested in an encrypted series of pings he was getting coming out of New Jersey and headed west. The signals dispersed to noise as he watched, but they headed in a general direction.

That's enough for a beginning he thought, and began to access to the local camera feeds to see if he could identify any anomaly among the sea of sedans that traversed that corridor.

To be safe, he called in for a roadblock to be formed ten miles ahead of the position he gave, under the pretense of a drug and sobriety checkpoint.

---

---

Renee is on her way. But will her getaway be as clean as she'd like?

Agent Boxer has taken a special interest in a signal traveling west and has called in reinforcements for a blanket sweep. What will he find?

Stay tuned for The Blockchain Explorer - Pt. III - Boxer and the Blockchain

Title image sourced from Pixabay.com

@prufarchy