65 More Plans To Implement

Bokuboy

The next two days were a bit of a blur. I worked out with Clint for most of the day and it was both tiring and rewarding, because I learned a lot from him and he was happy with my progress. When someone like Clint was happy, it meant he was impressed with you, which I knew was important to both Natasha and Director Fury. Staying on Fury's good side was definitely a priority for me.

During the first half of my lunch periods those two days, I ate in the cafeteria, sat at different tables each time, and talked to the people from different departments. Everyone liked my new stylish suits and I told them I had a few more to show off for them, which made the guys laugh and the women looked happy.

The irony of my workplace being like my high school cafeteria was not lost on me, especially when people greeted me by name and waved.

The second half of my lunch on Monday had been filled with me working out alone in the gym and I lifted a ridiculous amount of weights. I looked into welding another set of bars onto the leg press machine and knew I couldn't do it by myself, so I visited the maintenance floor before lunch ended and met with the men that worked there and talked to them about it.

I managed to convince them that I wanted a better weight distribution instead of having it all on the one set of bars, which was complete bullshit and I suspected that they knew it. When they stopped laughing, I offered an appropriate bribe of a gallon of coffee and six dozen donuts. I was quickly declared their best friend and they had happily added two extra bars to the machine instead of one.

The best part was that not a single person questioned why there were extra bars on the machine or even paid any attention to them. That was perfectly fine with me, because if the regular users didn't notice or cared, no one else was going to, either.

I had also checked my office before I left the building on Monday and I was surprised that it had a nice sized closet and an attached full bathroom inside, which let me direct my new friends in the maintenance department to the closet to strip it, add in the soundproofing materials, and to run the extra power leads for the server I wanted installed.

Those computer parts had been delivered two days later on Wednesday and I had to skip my lunch workout to set it all up. I did not install the 'best' operating system on it, StarkOS, because I knew it was so full of crap that it slowed a computer down significantly and chewed up resources unnecessarily.

I instead searched the local computer network and checked the mainframe's OS. It was a basic one with good security options, which was perfect, even if there wasn't a proper user interface. I could handle that and worked around it easily.

After I copied the OS, I finally had something I could check Peter's computer sciences project with. I sectioned off a small part of the memory and assigned a sole hard drive in my server to become a virtual independent drive and gave it a copy of the basic OS as well. I copied over the USB with Peter's things on it and loaded a basic editor.

Half of the coding I saw was gibberish, which meant Peter must have used a different editing program while in the computer lab. I didn't let that deter me, because I now had a small dedicated computer section that I could wreck by running his untested programs. I opened a memory and hard drive usage monitoring program and ran the first of Peter's programs on the virtual computer.

The screen flashed and some kind of window appeared with nothing in it, the memory I sectioned off was completely used up, and the hard drive spun for about thirty seconds. Nothing else happened until an error message appeared.

'Out of Memory: Error # 190432'

I chuckled and ended the program, cleared the memory and checked the hard drive. It had about a gigabyte of miscellaneous bits and bytes on it that didn't make sense and it needed to be reformatted to fix and remove them. I shook my head at the program and was glad that I hadn't tried running it on anything else. It would have wrecked whatever was used.

I tried several other programs and the results went from nothing to a little clicking game that let me bounce a small ball of light on the screen. It was actually a clever little thing and I wanted to tear it open to see how it worked, which meant that I would have to get into the school again and check the station Peter frequented to find the editor he used.

A quick check of the computer's logs would let me know what program he used the most and I would either have to copy the executable from there or try to find it myself somewhere else. I would also need to see if he used a compiler to encode the programs, too. I wanted to prove to the computer teacher that I wasn't just as good as Peter was at programming. I wanted her to see that I was much better.

I looked over at my fan-cooled closet and chuckled. Peter didn't even own a computer and I had a full server to play with and a brand new upgraded laptop. I was sure that someone was going to ask me what I was doing with all of that processing power though, so I would have to make a little stop this evening to a particular place. My ID folder was going to have its very first use and I was looking forward to it.

I left my office and locked it before I rode the elevator down to the basement and went back to the training room on B3. I changed into some of my new workout gear and spent another exhilarating afternoon getting pummelled by Clint. He looked like he enjoyed himself too, especially when I managed to block and countered one of his best hits.

Clint then attacked ruthlessly and made me pay for it, which he claimed was my reward for success. I actually laughed when he told me that, because I was laid out on the floor again and he helped me stand up.

“You've got the morning off tomorrow, so rest and relax.” Clint said.

“That sounds ominous for the afternoon session.” I said and he smirked at me. “Fine, don't tell me.”

Clint smacked my shoulder and left the training room.

I had a sneaking suspicion about what was going to happen and took a quick shower before I dressed in the same suit that I wore that morning and during lunch. I rode the elevator up to the ground floor and Melinda May stood there as she waited for me. She had driven me home each day since we met and we had lively discussions about food preparation and administration duties.

Melinda was also quite grateful for the new keyboard pad that had been issued. It was no secret that it was my design and I figured that was why a lot of people knew my name. It wasn't very often that a normal agent created a piece of equipment that anyone could use without any real training.

“I really appreciate you driving me home like this.” I said as the car pulled out of the parking garage.

“I really appreciate that you haven't hit on me or asked me to sleep with you.” Melinda countered.

I gave her a fake look of surprise. “Who the hell told you I wasn't hitting on you?”

Melinda looked surprised herself, then she started laughing. I joined in and we laughed pretty hard for nearly a full minute.

“Really, Ben. I mean it.” Melinda said and stopped the car at a red light. “I haven't been comfortable around people for a long while.” She said and gave me a sad look. “Usually when a man approaches me, it's either to fight or to try and get into my pants.”

“There's no way my butt would look good in those pants. I don't have the hips for it.” I said and she snorted and then laughed.

“Ben...” Melinda tried again.

“Believe me, Melinda. I know what you mean.” I said and nodded at the light changing. “Like I told you when we first met, it's nice to have a friend that understands.”

Melinda nodded herself and looked like she understood what I meant, and she drove the rest of the way to my home in silence. It was comfortable, because sometimes nothing needed to be said when you were with your friends. The car stopped in front of my apartment building and she put a hand on my arm.

“Eat lunch with me tomorrow.” Melinda said.

“Of course. I'll even wait outside the cafeteria for you and we can go in together.” I said and smiled. “Should we take bets now for when the rumors start about us sleeping together or do you want to wait until tomorrow?”

Melinda laughed softly. “You are a little behind the times in the office gossip, Ben. You've already bedded me and might have gotten me pregnant.”

“I knew I was a bit of a beast in bed; but, to get you pregnant and I wasn't even near you? My penis is awesome!” I exclaimed and she burst out laughing.

A horn honked from behind us and I opened the car door and grabbed my gym bag.

“I'll see you at lunch tomorrow.” I said and stepped out. “Have a good evening, Melinda.”

“Y-y-you, t-too.” Melinda stuttered and her face was full of amusement. She drove away and I waved an apology to the car behind her. The man nodded as his car passed me and I assumed he forgave me for delaying him. My spider-sense didn't go off to warn me of anything and that let me relax.

I went inside the apartment building and up to my apartment with a purpose, because I had supper to cook and an aunt to care for before I made a special trip to the electronics recycling plant on the outskirts of the city.

*

The night shift worker at the recycling plant did not appreciate the health and safety inspector invading his territory. No one had ever shown up in the three years he had worked there and the inspector looked more like someone his daughter would be friends with, rather than a government employee.

When the young man made the request to take him to where they stored the old cell phones because of the inherent metals and chemicals that could violate the environmental laws if they weren't disposed of properly, he barely managed to not laugh at the young man. In the years that he had been there, no one had mentioned that crushing the things and mixing them into the regular garbage landfill was the wrong thing to do.

In a fit of genius that he would later pat himself on the back for, he led the young man to one of the train railway boxcars that was filled to the top with old and discarded cell phones.

“If you want to check all of those and dispose of them in the proper way...” He said and waved at the small ladder rungs on the end of the railway car. “...go ahead and help yourself.”

The utterly shocked look on the young man's face really made his day.

“I'll even tell the other workers to leave this bin alone, just for you.” He said and clapped the inspector on the shoulder before he walked away. He had better things to do than humor a garbage inspector.

*

I stood there and stared at several tons... actual tons... of old cell phones. It was a ludicrous amount, even for my purposes; but, I couldn't back out now. I had used one of my IDs to gain access and I wasn't going to tell the guy to ignore what I had said. I also wasn't going to admit that my scheme had worked a bit too well for my own liking.

I had to contain my nervous laugh as I took out my cell phone and searched for a proper shipping company that could move a railway car for me. When I saw the price of a basic shipment, even across only part of the city, I almost threw up. I couldn't afford it, even after my company would be starting up next week, so I changed my search parameters and looked at self hauling companies.

I found one that was only 40 dollars a day to rent a vehicle with a 300 dollar deposit, and it wasn't that far away. I left the recycling plant and went to the rental business and picked up a delivery van that had a van cab front and a large rectangular metal box on the back of it. I used my transportation inspection ID and they didn't even ask if I had a license, which was a welcome surprise.

I bought a large plastic shovel and a piece of plywood at a hardware store before I went back to the recycling plant. No one asked what I was doing when I set the plywood across the inside of the pull down door on the back of the van and I started shovelling the old cell phones from the railway car inside.

I was both careful and meticulous as I transferred a very large pile of cell phones from the railway car into the back of the delivery van, because I didn't want to damage them any more than they had already been. I had taken so many of the cell phones that I had piled them into a large heap in the van's cargo area and I stopped when I had about three quarters of the railway car emptied and the pile was almost to the top of the piece of plywood, or about 4 feet high.

“If I thought you would accept, I would offer you a job here doing that full time.” The man I had talked to before said when I finally pulled the door down on the van and secured it.

“Thank you.” I said and smiled at the man. “Also, thanks for allowing me access to your facility.”

The man chuckled. “You're saving us a lot of work by clearing that crap out. We waste a lot of time separating the glass from the main bodies.”

I chuckled. “I know. I've done a few and good god, it's a pain in the ass.”

The man laughed. “We'll keep filling the railway car every month or so if you want to keep doing our jobs for us.”

I laughed, too. “I know you're joking; but, I might take you up on that offer anyway.”

“HA!” The man barked. “Send me the safety report for proper disposal when you're done with your inspections.”

“It might be a while, considering how many different models there are. Each one has different metals and components that could be bad if mixed or crushed together. The chemical and exothermic reactions from the internal batteries alone could cause a lot of environmental damage that won't be detected for years.”

“Right.” He said and grinned at me. “I won't hold my breath for a government report.”

“You actually understand how government paperwork works!” I joked and he laughed again.

He bid me a good night and I drove away with several thousand cell phones that I had gotten for free. Each phone had one micro camera on the back and most would have another one on the front. They would also have the circuitry to control the cameras and to connect with a wireless signal, which meant I had a huge resource of monitoring material and it wouldn't cost me anything but time and a little ingenuity.

I could also use a heat gun to warp the plastic casings into small domes to mount them in. If the cases were metal, I would have to find a metal press somewhere or pick up more plastic to make more casings. The plastic might be the cheaper alternative and I would definitely need a waterproof sealant to keep them from getting wet.

I parked the delivery van on the top level of a pay-to-park parking garage that was several blocks from my apartment building. I locked it up and left the normal way on foot to establish that I wasn't staying around and would need to go back the same way. I didn't have to, because I was going to web swing over later to gather a bunch of cell phones to tear apart.

I intended to work well into the night after May went to sleep. I had the morning off from training; but, that didn't mean I wasn't going to go into work anyway. I was sure that Kelly from the computer department wanted me there to help, if the longing looks on her face during lunch were any indication.

I went up to the apartment and spent the rest of the evening with May, to her delight, and I teased her about the shows she liked. She teased me right back and accused me about secretly liking them myself and that I only pretended to hate them to make her laugh.

I pretended to have a heart attack from shock and she laughed and laughed, then she tickled me and we had an impromptu wrestling match that ended up with us in a completely dishevelled state and cuddled up tightly. We both had huge smiles on our faces, too. Having family to carry on with was the best.

May eventually fell asleep and I carried her up to her bed. I tucked her in and went to my own room, signed for privacy and covered the camera, turned off the microphone, and donned my dark outfit and picked up a large plastic bin before I left through my bedroom window and web swung over to the parking garage. I quickly filled the bin with cell phones and web swung back home.

I undressed and uncovered the camera and turned on the microphone before I started to disassemble the cell phones. It was repetitive work to pop them apart, so I did that first and removed the glass from each of them. By the time I did the twentieth one, I had it down to a couple of seconds for each and I stacked the glass panels on my desk and put the rest of the cell phone parts on my bed.

When the large plastic bin was empty, I signed for privacy and covered the camera, dressed again and made another trip to the delivery van. I uncovered the camera after I returned and undressed, then I kept working. When I emptied the bin for a second time, the stacks of glass panels were several hundred in number and I had a lot of cell phones to disassemble.

I used my old laptop to do a quick search for the metals normally used in cell phone circuitry and was surprised at the traces of precious metals it contained. One phone would only have a minuscule amount and hundreds would have quite a bit more. Several thousand cell phones would have a huge amount of it to gather, which meant my plans of just discarding the unused parts would have to change.

I would worry about that later, though. For now, I had miniature cameras, microphones, control circuits, internal batteries, and wireless connection parts to harvest from tons of cell phones.