LEGAL - WHOLESALE SLOT MACHINES

(C) 2020 RLK
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Peter sighed heavily as he left the garage. It was a massive shell of a building, large enough to fit three medium-sized spacecraft, or scores of civilian-use vehicles. The ‘internship’ he had begun was not so much a job opportunity as a cutthroat competition against almost a hundred applicants to prove oneself capable of securing the two openings currently available. The first quarter test that was now behind him had been intellectually and physically grueling—and it was supposed to be the easy one.
Peter massaged the back of his neck as he trotted down some steps to the street. The tests would have been fine had they exhibited normal vehicular issues. Yet this first round of examinations was already pushing the limits of Peter’s knowledge. Only three months in, he was already working on vehicles he had never seen before and diagnosing mechanical failures that he had never even heard of.
His head was spinning by the time he rounded the corner to the parking stalls down the block. It had been such a long and operose day at the internship, and now he had to go to his first shift at Carnegie’s shop. Before his day would be over, he would have another shift at Luc’s. Or was it Chelsea’s? He was almost fired yesterday for clocking in at the wrong garage. He had had to pick up extra hours just to afford the exorbitant parking fees in the southwest sector where the internship was located.
Grayfeather Hills was one of the older neighborhoods in Caledan, close enough to the river to feel its humidity even as autumn began to change the world’s colors. The streets were always crowded, no matter the time of day or night, and yet were some of the cleanest Peter had ever seen. Food wrappers and some bits of plastic packaging only littered the narrow spaces between buildings, trampled and tucked into corners. The large windows on the glass buildings were almost clean enough to see a clear reflection. Even the smell was wealthy—the vinegar-and-iron scent of hovermobiles instead of the stench of refuse and death one normally encountered in a big city. On some days, Peter looked at the towering residential buildings with a twinge of longing. It would be nice to live in a clean neighborhood. He could ask Delia to move in so she had a safer commute to the restaurant where she worked.
Alas, the parking fees for just his scooter were almost as expensive as his current rent. He pushed the stupid fantasies from his mind as he turned up the ramp into the parking complex. Even if he did have the wealth to live somewhere nice, he would not squander it on something so superfluous.
After all, he had more urgent plans for the immediate future. He would suffer every humiliation of poverty if it afforded him a swifter resolution of his ultimate goal. His boots scraped some loose shavings on the rusted ramp as he thought snidely, Wealth would fucking help, though. If he had money, he could just buy the aether dust he needed so badly. That was partly why he wanted to do this internship. Heroes’ mechanics were paid extremely well.
In the empty silence of the parking garage, Peter thought back on his unfortunate—or, rather, disastrous—encounter with the supervillain Naku. He did not think himself the greatest fighter by any definition, but he liked to think he could hold his own. Yet Naku had barely lifted a finger, and he walked off with fewer bruises and far more aether dust than Peter.
What would it take to acquire even half of that skill?
Peter weaved through the rows of parking stalls, simmering. He was so deep in thought that he did not notice someone standing by his scooter until he was only ten yards away. When he caught sight of the figure, he pulled up short.
The young man leaned against the scooter, sitting half-propped on its seat with his hands in his pockets. He was a lanky fellow, taller than Peter but thinner by far. His face had a drooping quality to it, his lids heavy and his upper lip sagging over his bottom lip. At the same time, a spark lit his gray eyes, and when Peter noticed him, a smirk pulled at the left side of his pallid face.
Peter’s eyes widened at the sight of the man. “Kason?” he blurted in disbelief. Unbidden, the memory came to his mind of a willowy lad with a spring in his step, slick as oil and sharp as a knife, mad with the night but still willing to take Peter under his wing when they first met each other under McKittrick Bridge out west.
Pushing away from the scooter, Kason said in his usual husky voice, “You’ve moved up in the world, Peter.”
With a laugh, Peter stepped forward and grasped Kason’s hand in greeting, and his old friend returned the smile with that arrogant smirk that seemed to have permanently wrinkled the left side of his face. “Of all places to run into you again,” Peter remarked.
“Last I saw ya,” Kason rejoined, “we was five hundred miles south o’ here tryin’ ta stake out a meat factory. How the hell’d ya end up in Cally-dan?”
“A lot of walking,” Peter jested.
Kason snorted. “You’d be the dumbass ta walk the whole way. Why’d ya leave El Ladrón? We had a good grift goin’ there.”
“You disappeared,” Peter said, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. “Everyone else thought you’d been caught or killed.”
A knowing glint winked in Kason’s gray eyes as his face twisted a little more into that one-sided smirk. “But you did’n’ believe that, did ya?”
Peter shrugged. “No. But you vanished. What the hell happened to you, Kason? I waited around for almost a month—”
“Oh, I was just... honin’ my skills,” the scrawny man grinned evasively as he lifted his hand before him. Peter’s Kyp dangled by its strap from his fingers. With a start, Peter glanced down at his wrist to see only the vague tan-line where his Kyp had once been.
“You fucking rogue,” he decried good-naturedly.
Kason tossed the Kypséli device at Peter with a snide laugh. “Ya know how it is, Petey. I saw an oppo’tunity that I could’n’ pass up. But you, now? Makin’ big bucks ta afford a fuggin’ parkin’ stall? Ya ain’t a gutta’snipe no more, scuz. What happened—ya get caught by the coppers and forced into societal slavery?”
Peter chuckled. “I know how not to get caught, Kase. I just needed something more stable, is all.”
“Got a place o’ yer own now?” Kason rattled on. “Where ya stayin’? Ya drove past me down on Can’bury Avenue this mornin’—was how I know’d you was here, so I figured I’d pop in ta say hi. But no one drivin’ down Can’bury parks a scooter in Grayfeather.” As he spoke, he fished a can of spack from his pocket, carefully selecting a nodule to chew. Probably the same damn can he’s always had, Peter thought with amusement. Peter could never get a taste for the stuff, but Kason would chew it until it took his voice away.
When Kason fixed him with his piercing inquisition, Peter said, “Canterbury is just a shortcut. I’ve got a place over in Duggery District on the east side—”
“A retired street runner like you is still slummin’ it!?” Kason grated indignantly, chewing his spack loudly. “Nah, no hard-workin’ boy who used ta run in my gang is gonna settle fer the shit they got down in Duggery! Die or get rich tryin’, remember?”
Peter just grinned silently. He had forgotten just how ridiculously proud of his social deviance Kason could be.
“Say, lemme buy ya a drink,” Kason barreled on. “Catch up like ol’ pals ‘n all that.”
Peter shook his head somewhat ruefully. “I have to go to work—” he started, but Kason merely laughed.
“I ain’t takin’ no fer an answer, Petey,” he declared, slapping Peter’s shoulder. “We’s buddies, ain’t we? I’m skippin’ town after tonight, an’ I do’n’ wanna go without catchin’ up.”
And dragging me back into your gang, Peter finished, still shaking his head. He was glad to see Kason was alright. Leaving El Ladrón after he had gone missing had been a tough decision. But Peter had to keep his nose clean now. He needed to stay off of the Heroes’ radar. And he literally could not afford to miss his shifts.
Even so, Kason was his friend. If Kase had not let Peter join him all those years ago when they met under McKittrick Bridge, Peter likely would not have survived out on the streets. Of all people, Kason was worth this. And if it came to it, he had enough skill to work at any old two-bit mechanic shop.
“Alright,” he finally consented, and Kason cachinnated exultantly.
~
Peter had been thirteen years old when he met Kason—naught but a scruffy kid who had gone his second week without a bite to eat. On that humid night, he had slept under the McKittrick Bridge to escape the rain, tucked into an alcove where the large girders intersected with the top of the concrete slope. Kason had espied him from the edges of the muddy draw and taken the opportunity to pick his pockets—just for shits and giggles, he later admitted unapologetically. He had crept up silently, a practiced prowler. But the merest breath and the wind of his slowly, outstretched hand had awoken Peter instantly, and he had bolted upright. It had been the only time he had ever seen Kason completely stunned.
The wiry pickpocket had taken an instant liking to Peter that night. He gave him some food and invited him into his little roving band of other hoodlums, and Peter became a thief.
Kason typically ran things, since he was arguably the most skillful of the bunch and had the eye for the perfect mark, but there were five others besides him in his retinue. Leon was a tiny lad from the Mediterranean region. He tended to think anyone who was taller than him was challenging his competence, and he would become inconsolably apoplectic whenever attention was brought to his height. Kason always told him his size was the reason he kept him around because could wiggle through the smallest of crawlspaces, but it rarely dampened Leon’s truculence.
Nol and his twin brother, Tak, admitted to being off-world kids, though their precise ancestry changed with every story they told; Nol’s favorite tale was the one where he was born on a star, and Tak seemed convinced he was Michael Jackson. Of the two, Nol did most of the talking. Despite their mythomania, the gray-skinned bulldog of a boy consistently and heartily bragged about how many cops they had given the slip. He and Tak often served as what Kason called the distraction.
Besides the boys, there was also Lita, a dark-skinned girl from Caledan who could break any lock, whether physical, electronic, or cybertronic. She never spoke a single word to Peter for as long as he had known her. And then there was Thiesta of Thebes, who spoke enough for both of them. She liked to call herself the team’s shill; Kason liked to call her their femme fatale. From what Peter could tell, she did just about everything.
Peter had found his place among Kason’s band as a veritable watchdog. Kason had found value in his hyperawareness, and he brought him along on every heist to watch his back. It seemed what had been quotidian chariness to Peter was now an asset, and he liked the sense of belonging that resulted from the timorous habit.
The small gang spent their days on the move, crossing the dangerous hinterlands along ancient stony roads. They would stop only a few days in towns that Kason thought would have something worth stealing, and then they would move on—unshackled, as Kason put it, by the trappings that weighed upon society. Jobs, rent, taxes—they were mere fantasy!
Peter had to admit that he looked back on those early years with a fondness for the thrill. It had been the first time he could do as he wished, and he believed that the freedom had had a benefic influence on his independence and drive to accomplish his future goals. If he wanted something, he simply took it. If there were consequences, he learned how to evade them.
Those days ended when they stopped in El Ladrón for food. It should have been an easy grab—sneak in, sneak out, and not even a security system to worry about. By all accounts, it was a theft that any one of them could have done solo.
So when Kason went in alone and never came back out, everyone said he had been shot. Peter argued that Kason was smarter than that, but the others did not care. Nol and Tak left that night, and Lita and Thiesta left the next day. Leon had followed Kason the longest, so he gave it a week, he and Peter searching for any information in the city. But even he took off eventually, with nary even a shrug.
Five years, they had all run together. Yet they fell away so easily.
Peter had decided to go on to Caledan, for at the time, it was a place of myth and mystery that he had always longed to see. Around the same time, The Shield had been appointed to sit on the Council, the political engine that ran the community of Heroes headquartered on the plateau that was distractingly called the Council of Heroes. The youngest and most powerful Hero yet to have that honor, Carmen represented everything Peter might have been had he not been born nearly powerless at the end of his line.
And so Peter decided to kill him. After all, if he wanted something, he simply took it.
~
“Thiesta gave it a whole day?” Kason asked as the two sipped their third rounds of pomona kir. Snickering quietly, he added, “I thought fer sure she woulda been the first ta go.”
“Alright, I told you my story. Now pay up—where the fuck did you go back in El Ladrón?” Peter asked, leaning back in his chair. They both sat at a small table outside of an alley restaurant, the murmur of conversation from a few other customers accenting the fuggy gloaming. Dusk often came early to Caledan’s sea of high rises, but the city never slept.
Propping his elbows on the table, Kason leaned forward conspiratorially, fixing Peter with his half-lidded eyes and one-sided smirk. In a low tone, he grinned, “Found myself a mentor.”
Peter frowned. “You never needed a mentor. You were the best out of all of us.”
“Well, o’ course,” Kason snorted. “I was a damn good thief, yeah. But this was’n’ any ol’ mentor.” He lowered his voice so that Peter had to lean forward just to hear him. “I got picked up by a villain.”
Peter froze, a peculiar electricity jolting through him. Naku had suggested he himself get a mentor, once upon a time. Peter refused to be a villain, but since then, he had oft wondered what he might be able to learn from someone who could simply walk off a freighter with over three million credits’ worth of stolen stock.
He glanced around to make sure the other patrons were preoccupied with their drinks before turning his attention back to Kason. Careful to hide his interest, Peter commented quietly, “You’re a scoundrel, Kase, but I never took you for a villain.”
“Well,” Kason shrugged, his smirk deepening, “it turns out I got the right ideals. Ya know why I became a thief, right? If I want it, I should have it. The rich do’n’ need it all, right?”
Peter shrugged.
“Well,” Kason snickered, “guess who’s the richest an’ the most arrogant o’ the lot? Heroes. E’ry damn one o’ them. See, Cally-dan here is a global hub. Been anywhere else in the Provinces o’ Sol? Even the richest cities pale in comparison to this place! Why? This here’s the seat of the Council o’ Heroes! They scoop whatever the fuck they want outta our pockets and act like they’s doin’ us a favor by rescuin’ us from—well, people like me.” He snickered derisively. “They created me! It’s the Heroes I’m after now, scuz. They’s the richest an’ I want it.”
Peter leaned forward eagerly, catching on to one thing Kason had said. “You’ve been off world?”
Eyeing him carefully, Kason’s one-sided smirk stretched into a grin. “Ta the farthest reach o’ the Provinces,” he replied. “Part o’ my trainin’.” Propping his elbows on the table again, he asked, “You ain’t never even crossed the mesosphere, ain’t that right, Petey?”
Peter picked up his glass of kir, trying to regain his affectation of nonchalance. “No,” he admitted, “never been that high up. What the hell would an ex-thief need to leave the planet for, anyway?”
“There’s other star systems than Sol, ya know,” Kason laughed. “Plenty rich ones, too.”
“Caledan’s got enough for me,” Peter mumbled into his drink.
“Shame,” Kason smirked, his eyes fixed on Peter’s almost predatorily. “I coulda fixed somethin’ up fer ya with my boss.”
Peter snorted and set his drink down. “I ain’t dumb enough to train as a villain, Kase.”
“Nah, I never figured ya’d take that up—yer too nice ta be a villain,” Kason shrugged, “but I was’n’ talkin’ ‘bout that. I got a bus’ness proposition. See, I got a pretty little heist all lined up that you’ll want a part in—”
Peter hastily glanced around to make sure the other restaurant-goers were still out of earshot. “I play things safe now, Kase,” he hissed. “Especially now that I’ve got this internship, which I really want to work out—”
“Listen, scuz,” Kason pressed, his eyelids drooping even lower as his grin broadened. “This job will set ya up so well that ya can get out o’ Duggery by tomorrow. Ya can live in a place befittin’ a kid who used ta run with my gang.”
“Prison?”
Pointedly ignoring him, Kason went on, “From what I heard, Cally-dan got itself a fresh shipment o’ aether dust a few months back.”
Despite himself, Peter listened a little closer.
“Now,” Kason continued in his low, grating tone, “word on the street says security spiked after some guy called Wraith fucked up a grift. But it’s been long enough now that they’s startin’ ta cool it down. I remember ya sayin’ once that the hit that hurts hardest is a blind sucker-punch just when ya start ta think ya can relax—and I wanna hit them hard.”
He idly picked up his half-empty glass of kir and drained the rest of it. Scrubbing his mouth with the back of his wrist, he said, “Whatta ya say, Petey? We could use a spotter.”
Peter’s hands trembled beneath the table. He certainly needed to acquire aether dust somehow. But if he agreed, he would have to join as Peter, and not as Wraith. He would have to leave his visor behind. His visor emitted a short range scrambler, effectively hiding him from electronic means to determine his identity; however, it was associated with Wraith, and Peter could not let Kason know he and Wraith were one and the same. A year ago, he would have joined Kason without a second thought, but now that he had his Heroes’ mechanic internship, not to mention a girlfriend, he had to be more careful about committing a burglary without extra security to mask who he was...
He mentally checked himself. He was not seriously considering this, was he? His escapades as Wraith had been silent for the past few months. If he managed to complete the internship successfully, he could earn the money to just buy the aether dust, legally and without suspicion.
And if you fail the internship, you’ll have lost two chances to get the dust, his pragmatism whispered in the back of his mind.
Clenching his fingers into fists, he said quietly, “Even relaxed, security is still pretty tight in Caledan.”
Sensing his victory, Kason’s whole face twisted into that ugly grin. “Good thing I got a fantastic locksmith, then.” He tapped his temple, excitement glowing in his eyes.
Frowning Peter asked, “Who—?” He cut himself off, and his eyes widened. “Lita?”
Slapping the table with the palm of his hand, Kason vaunted, “Fuggin’ Lita, man! Found the bitch over in the shan’ytown just west o’ the river. Figures I’d only find you quiet ones—Leon an’ Thiesta were more fun ta have around.”
“I never realized Lita was in town,” Peter mumbled.
“So does that convince ya?” Kason smirked. “I’ve already got everythin’ set. All’s we need ta do is do it.”
“What would be my cut?” Peter asked, sipping the last of his drink.
“My boss gets half, so we split the rest,” Kason explained gleefully. “Even, as we always did. We’ll get as much as we can carry.”
“This boss is the guy who trained you?”
“Yeah. Guy named Vibes,” Kason shrugged. “Says he always operated in a tiny spiral galaxy out on the fringes o’ the stellarverse. This job would be my, uh... graduation, so ta speak.”
“I didn’t realize villains had that.”
“Oh, they’s a whole network,” Kason laughed. Leaning forward, he added, “After the Heroes, I’m goin’ for their wealth, next.” He chuckled again. The familiar tittering snicker brought back so many memories of the times they still ran together that Peter felt a pull of nostalgia. He had missed having a team. And with Kason, he just might get the aether dust he needed.
Peter set his glass down with a clank and stood. “Alright,” he smiled. “I’m in.
~
The aether dust manufacturing plant that Kason had marked for the heist was a mountainous structure stretching along the edge of the river that bordered Caledan’s southeastern edge. Once called the Ohio River, it now was called Nhkutala, in honor of the superhero from Planet Jhn in the il’Li Galaxy. The dust plant spanned several acres near the Nhkutala River’s confluence with the Mississippi—still in the process of being renamed—and its entire complex was the amalgamation of a gigantic machine. The refinement process for aether dust was a complicated and energy-intensive ordeal, requiring whole buildings full of caustic gas, others filled with fermentation tanks, and still others devoted to multifarious catalysis chambers requiring just about every radioactive metal on the periodic table, all as part of the workup for the aether dust.
The refinement plants all across the planet provided jobs for a large portion of the population. Peter might have worked in the factories, once upon a time, had things been different. However, the factories were known for their harsh working environments. Despite the incredible health care coverage they provided, their employees often suffered premature deaths due to organ failures, cancer, or even severe neurological degradation. The refinement process tamed the space dust into much less reactive forms to fuel everyday life, but the process itself often could be worse than the raw material. All in all, Peter was glad he was able to take a job as a mechanic and avoid a life in the refinement plants.
Peter agreed to meet Kason at the plant by nine, so he had time to go home to prepare a little. He left behind his electronic identification devices—his Kypséli as well as his comm—in case there were any passive scanners around the plant. He thought longingly about his visor, desiring that extra layer of security, but the risks of being identified as Wraith were too great. Instead, he donned a dark hoodie and a black face mask. It would have to do.
He met Kason at the corner of 25th and 25th Streets, a rather dark avenue hidden beneath layers of rail lines and the shadows of altitudinous towers. The 25th Streets Neighborhood squeezed in just a few blocks away from the northern end of the aether dust plant, stagnating in the stale fumes pumping from the factory’s stacks. The neighborhood stank of decay and refuse, like many of the lower class areas in other cities where the gang had worked. Its location beneath the more multitudinous layers of overhead tram lines shaded the neighborhood from heavy rains, exempting it from their cleaning influence; the erstwhile shelter also made the small neighborhood an ideal location for many of the homeless waifs, both resident and transient. It seemed a fitting rendezvous, in Peter’s mind. He felt the familiar excitement of a heist with his old team already beginning to burgeon within him.
Kason was already there with Lita when Peter arrived at the corner. Lita was a small girl, mousy by most people’s standards. She was incredibly thin, boasting a diminutive body type that only adolescent girls thought was beautiful. Her baggy overalls seemed to dwarf her in comparison.
She had switched out her dangling piercings with simple studs since last Peter had seen her. They once had clinked whenever she moved, glittering from her ears and her nose, but thankfully she had opted for a stealthier style. Unfortunately, she made up for it with her hair. The left half of her head was now shaved nearly bald, and the right half hung in a curtain past her ear. Though her hair was naturally dark, she had bleached it since they had run in Kason’s band. Against her dark skin, it looked like a glowing beacon in the night. ^Illustration
When Peter arrived, she turned her large, half-lidded brown eyes on him, and her tiny, rosebud lips turned downwards at the corners. Beneath his mask, Peter smiled. He had never known why she refused to talk to him during the five years they worked together, and it seemed like her disposition toward him had not changed. The ordinariness of it—the stability of it—was strangely heartening.
“Petey!” Kason barked around a half-chewed nodule of spack, that smirk pulling at the left side of his mouth again. “Ready ta go?”
“Are we getting fresh dust or refined product?” Peter asked, glancing up at the stacks barely visible above the buildings all around. The river’s energy was used at several points in the manufacturing process, aligning the refinement pathway with the Nhkutala’s flow. As such, the refined product fermented in vats at the southern end. The final product was safer to handle, but it was generally cheaper at a fence. It was also not reactive enough for Peter’s needs. If he could get the right tools, he might be able to make it work, but it was not ideal.
To Peter’s satisfaction, Kason smirked and said, “As fresh as we can find it. Die or get rich tryin’, right?”
Lita snorted, and Peter grinned.
“So what’s the plan?” Peter asked as Kason set off across the street with his brisk, loping stride. Lita hurried after him, almost jogging to keep up, and Peter followed.
As they wound through the narrow streets, Kason explained over his shoulder, “You’ll go in with Lita first. Get her ta the security office ta shut off cameras and security measures and so on. I’ll go in and get the goods.”
“I thought you needed me to watch your back—”
“Yeah, you’ll come meet me after gettin’ Lita in safe. We was gonna have her access their mainframe remotely, since she apparently gave up prowlin’, but now that yer with us, ya can get her inside ta do more damage.” Kason cast him a sidelong glance over his shoulder. “Ya can still prowl, right?”
“Of course,” Peter muttered, shifting his face mask a little higher on the bridge of his nose. “Gave up prowling, huh?” he directed at Lita. In all her years devotedly breaking into locked buildings for their gang, she had never mentioned disliking it. She just ignored him as usual, her expression sour.
“Once ya get her in,” Kason carried on, “you ‘n me’s will carry out as much dust as we can.”
“How will we carry—?”
“Relax, scuz,” Kason chortled, pausing at a street corner. “It’s all taken care of.”
When Peter reached the corner, he stopped, as well, and stared in awe. The narrow corridors of the slum opened to an empty expanse almost thirty yards across, bare of plant or manmade device. Left and right, the yawning space seemed to circle the entire plant, isolating it from the city. On the other side of the clearing, the manufacturing plant loomed like a gargantuan mountain above them, so high that the tops of its stacks and towers were lost in the yellow haze of its fumes. Unlike the constant hum and thrum in the city, the plant moaned and growled and rumbled. It sounded monstrous and threatening, like one of the colossal beasts that made life a daily gladiatorial ring on most of the planets in the Andromeda Galaxy.
Sparing the factory only a passing glance, Kason struck out to the left along the edge of the warehouse, heading toward an old trash alley packed with large rubbish crates. Rustling through the refuse, he withdrew a burlap duffel bag and tossed it on the ground. Peter and Lita moved to join him as he rifled through its contents.
“Here,” Kason said, tossing a wrapped object at Peter and another at Lita. Curiously, Peter unwound the old cloth from the heavy object and dropped it into his hand. With a start, he realized it was a small pistol. It was simple in design, a single-shooter with only five individual pysa-capsules. Lita unwrapped her parcel to discover the same.
Frowning, Peter muttered, “I never agreed to shoot anyone, Kase.”
“They’s precautionary,” Kason shrugged, withdrawing a pistol of his own and tucking it into a holster beneath his arm.
“We’ve always done burglaries,” Peter argued. “We’ve never needed guns.”
“And now we’s breakin' into one o’ the most highly secured locations outside o’ the Council,” Kason pressed. He raised an eyebrow at Peter as he worked his jaw around the spack nodule quietly hissing away as it slowly dissolved. “Look, just keep it on ya. If ya’d rather get shot, then do’n’ use it.” Reluctantly, Peter tucked the pistol into the pocket of his hoodie.
Reaching into the bag again, Kason next withdrew two large barrels wrapped in shoulder harnesses. Peter’s eyes widened at the sight of them. They were remarkably similar to the one that Naku had had back when he intercepted Peter the last time he tried to steal aether dust from Hero Vaise’s ship. They were larger, however, probably close to ten gallons each.
“You planning on buying yourself a galaxy?” Peter asked sardonically, reaching out to take one of the barrel packs.
“Ya mistake me fer a common man with common goals,” Kason laughed, tugging both of them out of reach. “I’ll keep hold o’ these while ya get Lita inside. They’ll just slow ya down.” To Lita, he said, “Did ya bring yer lock-pick thing?”
In answer, she withdrew her hand from her pocket and held up a small, oval-shaped, palm-sized device with two screens and a slot that could fold open into various-sized protrusions. It was the same pick she had always carried, combining both physical lock-picks and an electronic setting to hack into the more ubiquitous high-tech security systems.
Kason smirked, “Great. Toss it. I got ya one better.” She glared at him as he dug through his duffel and withdrew a similar device. It was a little larger, less worn, and matte gray in color. In addition to its cybertronic screens and physical pins and rods, it boasted a small lens of some sort.
“New tech,” Kason explained, tossing the device at her. She caught it deftly and turned it over, immediately thumbing it to life and inspecting its settings. The screens did not glow in the darkness like her old one, but dimpled and buzzed inaudibly. It was a tactiplectic device, a newer technology boasting faster baud rate and stabler interface, and which was far less prone to device failure than older tech. Lita’s eyes lit up with delight.
Laughing, Kason said, “I figured ya’d like that. They’s got tighter security than we usually hit, so that should do ya good.” Reaching into the bag one last time, he tossed an older model Kyp at Peter. “That’s got the layout o’ the plant. Stripped o’ transmission capabilities, so it should’n’ trip any o’ their alarms.” Peter turned it on and scanned the small display, quickly scoping a route and singling out areas that he should avoid. The plant had been designed for efficiency, and as such some areas created corridors with limited exits. He did not want to get cornered.
“Get Lita ta the security office an’ let her do her thing,” Kason went on as Peter studied the map. “Once she’s done, meet me here.” He pointed to a spot on the map near the northern edge of the factory. “The vats fer pre-workup are in this sector, but now they’s got a bunch o’ physical security patrollin’ around it—no thanks ta that dumbass Wraith. Wo’n’ be a problem fer you, though, eh?”
“You said they were starting to let up—“
“Yep,” Kason interrupted brusquely, slinging a barrel pack over his shoulder. “Before, they was patrollin’ everywhere. Alright, it’s just about fifth shift change. You two ready ta go?”
Lita gave a perfunctory thumbs-up, and Peter strapped the old Kyp to his wrist. Without another word, the three of them split, Kason heading in one direction and Peter and Lita heading the other. Peter felt charged and nervous as he darted across the empty corridor toward the factory, Lita slinking along at his side. But this was his bailiwick. Once he fell back into the rhythm of working with his old team, this entire heist would be a piece of cake.
[Continued below]

With the closure of almost half of Atlantic City's casinos, Newark set to vote on gambling and casinos or racinos in almost every state, it seems as if the reasons for the very existence of Atlantic City are in serious jeopardy.
Israel Joffe
Atlantic City, once a major vacation spot during the roaring 20s and 1930s, as seen on HBOs Boardwalk Empire, collapsed when cheap air fare became the norm and people had no reason to head to the many beach town resorts on the East Coast. Within a few decades, the city, known for being an ‘oasis of sin’ during the prohibition era, fell into serious decline and dilapidation.
New Jersey officials felt the only way to bring Atlantic City back from the brink of disaster would be to legalize gambling. Atlantic City’s first casino, Resorts, first opened its doors in 1978. People stood shoulder to shoulder, packed into the hotel as gambling officially made its way to the East Coast. Folks in the East Coast didn't have to make a special trip all the way to Vegas in order to enjoy some craps, slots, roulette and more.
As time wore on, Atlantic City became the premier gambling spots in the country.
While detractors felt that the area still remained poor and dilapidated, officials were quick to point out that the casinos didn't bring the mass gentrification to Atlantic City as much as they hoped but the billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs for the surrounding communities was well worth it.
Atlantic City developed a reputation as more of a short-stay ‘day-cation’ type of place, yet managed to stand firm against the 'adult playground' and 'entertainment capital of the world' Las Vegas.
Through-out the 1980s, Atlantic City would become an integral part of American pop culture as a place for east coast residents to gamble, watch boxing, wrestling, concerts and other sporting events.
However in the late 1980s, a landmark ruling considered Native-American reservations to be sovereign entities not bound by state law. It was the first potential threat to the iron grip Atlantic City and Vegas had on the gambling and entertainment industry.
Huge 'mega casinos' were built on reservations that rivaled Atlantic City and Vegas. In turn, Vegas built even more impressive casinos.
Atlantic City, in an attempt to make the city more appealing to the ‘big whale’ millionaire and billionaire gamblers, and in effort to move away from its ‘seedy’ reputation, built the luxurious Borgata casino in 2003. Harrah’s created a billion dollar extension and other casinos in the area went through serious renovations and re-branded themselves.
It seemed as if the bite that the Native American casinos took out of AC and Vegas’ profits was negligible and that the dominance of those two cities in the world of gambling would remain unchallenged.
Then Macau, formally a colony of Portugal, was handed back to the Chinese in 1999. The gambling industry there had been operated under a government-issued monopoly license by Stanley Ho's Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau. The monopoly was ended in 2002 and several casino owners from Las Vegas attempted to enter the market.
Under the one country, two systems policy, the territory remained virtually unchanged aside from mega casinos popping up everywhere. All the rich ‘whales’ from the far east had no reason anymore to go to the United States to spend their money.
Then came the biggest threat.
As revenue from dog and horse racing tracks around the United States dried up, government officials needed a way to bring back jobs and revitalize the surrounding communities. Slot machines in race tracks started in Iowa in 1994 but took off in 2004 when Pennsylvania introduced ‘Racinos’ in an effort to reduce property taxes for the state and to help depressed areas bounce back.
As of 2013, racinos were legal in ten states: Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and West Virginia with more expected in 2015.
Tracks like Delaware Park and West Virginia's Mountaineer Park, once considered places where local degenerates bet on broken-down nags in claiming races, are now among the wealthiest tracks around, with the best races.
The famous Aqueduct race track in Queens, NY, once facing an uncertain future, now possesses the most profitable casino in the United States.
From June 2012 to June 2013, Aqueduct matched a quarter of Atlantic City's total gaming revenue from its dozen casinos: $729.2 million compared with A.C.'s $2.9 billion. It has taken an estimated 15 percent hit on New Jersey casino revenue and climbing.
And it isn't just Aqueduct that's taking business away from them. Atlantic City's closest major city, Philadelphia, only 35-40 minutes away, and one of the largest cities in America, now has a casino that has contributed heavily to the decline in gamers visiting the area.
New Jersey is the third state in the U.S. to have authorized internet gambling. However, these online casinos are owned and controlled by Atlantic City casinos in an effort to boost profits in the face of fierce competition.
California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Texas are hoping to join Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey and the U.S. Virgin Islands in offering online gambling to their residents.
With this in mind, it seems the very niche that Atlantic City once offered as a gambling and entertainment hub for east coast residents is heading toward the dustbin of history.
Time will tell if this city will end up like Detroit. However, the fact that they are losing their biggest industry to major competition, much like Detroit did, with depressed housing, casinos bankrupting/closing and businesses fleeing , it all makes Atlantic City’s fate seem eerily similar.

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Peter sighed heavily as he left the garage. It was a massive shell of a building, large enough to fit three medium-sized spacecraft, or scores of civilian-use vehicles. The ‘internship’ he had begun was not so much a job opportunity as a cutthroat competition against almost a hundred applicants to prove oneself capable of securing the two openings currently available. The first quarter test that was now behind him had been intellectually and physically grueling—and it was supposed to be the easy one.
Peter massaged the back of his neck as he trotted down some steps to the street. The tests would have been fine had they exhibited normal vehicular issues. Yet this first round of examinations was already pushing the limits of Peter’s knowledge. Only three months in, he was already working on vehicles he had never seen before and diagnosing mechanical failures that he had never even heard of.
His head was spinning by the time he rounded the corner to the parking stalls down the block. It had been such a long and operose day at the internship, and now he had to go to his first shift at Carnegie’s shop. Before his day would be over, he would have another shift at Luc’s. Or was it Chelsea’s? He was almost fired yesterday for clocking in at the wrong garage. He had had to pick up extra hours just to afford the exorbitant parking fees in the southwest sector where the internship was located.
Grayfeather Hills was one of the older neighborhoods in Caledan, close enough to the river to feel its humidity even as autumn began to change the world’s colors. The streets were always crowded, no matter the time of day or night, and yet were some of the cleanest Peter had ever seen. Food wrappers and some bits of plastic packaging only littered the narrow spaces between buildings, trampled and tucked into corners. The large windows on the glass buildings were almost clean enough to see a clear reflection. Even the smell was wealthy—the vinegar-and-iron scent of hovermobiles instead of the stench of refuse and death one normally encountered in a big city. On some days, Peter looked at the towering residential buildings with a twinge of longing. It would be nice to live in a clean neighborhood. He could ask Delia to move in so she had a safer commute to the restaurant where she worked.
Alas, the parking fees for just his scooter were almost as expensive as his current rent. He pushed the stupid fantasies from his mind as he turned up the ramp into the parking complex. Even if he did have the wealth to live somewhere nice, he would not squander it on something so superfluous.
After all, he had more urgent plans for the immediate future. He would suffer every humiliation of poverty if it afforded him a swifter resolution of his ultimate goal. His boots scraped some loose shavings on the rusted ramp as he thought snidely, Wealth would fucking help, though. If he had money, he could just buy the aether dust he needed so badly. That was partly why he wanted to do this internship. Heroes’ mechanics were paid extremely well.
In the empty silence of the parking garage, Peter thought back on his unfortunate—or, rather, disastrous—encounter with the supervillain Naku. He did not think himself the greatest fighter by any definition, but he liked to think he could hold his own. Yet Naku had barely lifted a finger, and he walked off with fewer bruises and far more aether dust than Peter.
What would it take to acquire even half of that skill?
Peter weaved through the rows of parking stalls, simmering. He was so deep in thought that he did not notice someone standing by his scooter until he was only ten yards away. When he caught sight of the figure, he pulled up short.
The young man leaned against the scooter, sitting half-propped on its seat with his hands in his pockets. He was a lanky fellow, taller than Peter but thinner by far. His face had a drooping quality to it, his lids heavy and his upper lip sagging over his bottom lip. At the same time, a spark lit his gray eyes, and when Peter noticed him, a smirk pulled at the left side of his pallid face.
Peter’s eyes widened at the sight of the man. “Kason?” he blurted in disbelief. Unbidden, the memory came to his mind of a willowy lad with a spring in his step, slick as oil and sharp as a knife, mad with the night but still willing to take Peter under his wing when they first met each other under McKittrick Bridge out west.
Pushing away from the scooter, Kason said in his usual husky voice, “You’ve moved up in the world, Peter.”
With a laugh, Peter stepped forward and grasped Kason’s hand in greeting, and his old friend returned the smile with that arrogant smirk that seemed to have permanently wrinkled the left side of his face. “Of all places to run into you again,” Peter remarked.
“Last I saw ya,” Kason rejoined, “we was five hundred miles south o’ here tryin’ ta stake out a meat factory. How the hell’d ya end up in Cally-dan?”
“A lot of walking,” Peter jested.
Kason snorted. “You’d be the dumbass ta walk the whole way. Why’d ya leave El Ladrón? We had a good grift goin’ there.”
“You disappeared,” Peter said, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. “Everyone else thought you’d been caught or killed.”
A knowing glint winked in Kason’s gray eyes as his face twisted a little more into that one-sided smirk. “But you did’n’ believe that, did ya?”
Peter shrugged. “No. But you vanished. What the hell happened to you, Kason? I waited around for almost a month—”
“Oh, I was just... honin’ my skills,” the scrawny man grinned evasively as he lifted his hand before him. Peter’s Kyp dangled by its strap from his fingers. With a start, Peter glanced down at his wrist to see only the vague tan-line where his Kyp had once been.
“You fucking rogue,” he decried good-naturedly.
Kason tossed the Kypséli device at Peter with a snide laugh. “Ya know how it is, Petey. I saw an oppo’tunity that I could’n’ pass up. But you, now? Makin’ big bucks ta afford a fuggin’ parkin’ stall? Ya ain’t a gutta’snipe no more, scuz. What happened—ya get caught by the coppers and forced into societal slavery?”
Peter chuckled. “I know how not to get caught, Kase. I just needed something more stable, is all.”
“Got a place o’ yer own now?” Kason rattled on. “Where ya stayin’? Ya drove past me down on Can’bury Avenue this mornin’—was how I know’d you was here, so I figured I’d pop in ta say hi. But no one drivin’ down Can’bury parks a scooter in Grayfeather.” As he spoke, he fished a can of spack from his pocket, carefully selecting a nodule to chew. Probably the same damn can he’s always had, Peter thought with amusement. Peter could never get a taste for the stuff, but Kason would chew it until it took his voice away.
When Kason fixed him with his piercing inquisition, Peter said, “Canterbury is just a shortcut. I’ve got a place over in Duggery District on the east side—”
“A retired street runner like you is still slummin’ it!?” Kason grated indignantly, chewing his spack loudly. “Nah, no hard-workin’ boy who used ta run in my gang is gonna settle fer the shit they got down in Duggery! Die or get rich tryin’, remember?”
Peter just grinned silently. He had forgotten just how ridiculously proud of his social deviance Kason could be.
“Say, lemme buy ya a drink,” Kason barreled on. “Catch up like ol’ pals ‘n all that.”
Peter shook his head somewhat ruefully. “I have to go to work—” he started, but Kason merely laughed.
“I ain’t takin’ no fer an answer, Petey,” he declared, slapping Peter’s shoulder. “We’s buddies, ain’t we? I’m skippin’ town after tonight, an’ I do’n’ wanna go without catchin’ up.”
And dragging me back into your gang, Peter finished, still shaking his head. He was glad to see Kason was alright. Leaving El Ladrón after he had gone missing had been a tough decision. But Peter had to keep his nose clean now. He needed to stay off of the Heroes’ radar. And he literally could not afford to miss his shifts.
Even so, Kason was his friend. If Kase had not let Peter join him all those years ago when they met under McKittrick Bridge, Peter likely would not have survived out on the streets. Of all people, Kason was worth this. And if it came to it, he had enough skill to work at any old two-bit mechanic shop.
“Alright,” he finally consented, and Kason cachinnated exultantly.
~
Peter had been thirteen years old when he met Kason—naught but a scruffy kid who had gone his second week without a bite to eat. On that humid night, he had slept under the McKittrick Bridge to escape the rain, tucked into an alcove where the large girders intersected with the top of the concrete slope. Kason had espied him from the edges of the muddy draw and taken the opportunity to pick his pockets—just for shits and giggles, he later admitted unapologetically. He had crept up silently, a practiced prowler. But the merest breath and the wind of his slowly, outstretched hand had awoken Peter instantly, and he had bolted upright. It had been the only time he had ever seen Kason completely stunned.
The wiry pickpocket had taken an instant liking to Peter that night. He gave him some food and invited him into his little roving band of other hoodlums, and Peter became a thief.
Kason typically ran things, since he was arguably the most skillful of the bunch and had the eye for the perfect mark, but there were five others besides him in his retinue. Leon was a tiny lad from the Mediterranean region. He tended to think anyone who was taller than him was challenging his competence, and he would become inconsolably apoplectic whenever attention was brought to his height. Kason always told him his size was the reason he kept him around because could wiggle through the smallest of crawlspaces, but it rarely dampened Leon’s truculence.
Nol and his twin brother, Tak, admitted to being off-world kids, though their precise ancestry changed with every story they told; Nol’s favorite tale was the one where he was born on a star, and Tak seemed convinced he was Michael Jackson. Of the two, Nol did most of the talking. Despite their mythomania, the gray-skinned bulldog of a boy consistently and heartily bragged about how many cops they had given the slip. He and Tak often served as what Kason called the distraction.
Besides the boys, there was also Lita, a dark-skinned girl from Caledan who could break any lock, whether physical, electronic, or cybertronic. She never spoke a single word to Peter for as long as he had known her. And then there was Thiesta of Thebes, who spoke enough for both of them. She liked to call herself the team’s shill; Kason liked to call her their femme fatale. From what Peter could tell, she did just about everything.
Peter had found his place among Kason’s band as a veritable watchdog. Kason had found value in his hyperawareness, and he brought him along on every heist to watch his back. It seemed what had been quotidian chariness to Peter was now an asset, and he liked the sense of belonging that resulted from the timorous habit.
The small gang spent their days on the move, crossing the dangerous hinterlands along ancient stony roads. They would stop only a few days in towns that Kason thought would have something worth stealing, and then they would move on—unshackled, as Kason put it, by the trappings that weighed upon society. Jobs, rent, taxes—they were mere fantasy!
Peter had to admit that he looked back on those early years with a fondness for the thrill. It had been the first time he could do as he wished, and he believed that the freedom had had a benefic influence on his independence and drive to accomplish his future goals. If he wanted something, he simply took it. If there were consequences, he learned how to evade them.
Those days ended when they stopped in El Ladrón for food. It should have been an easy grab—sneak in, sneak out, and not even a security system to worry about. By all accounts, it was a theft that any one of them could have done solo.
So when Kason went in alone and never came back out, everyone said he had been shot. Peter argued that Kason was smarter than that, but the others did not care. Nol and Tak left that night, and Lita and Thiesta left the next day. Leon had followed Kason the longest, so he gave it a week, he and Peter searching for any information in the city. But even he took off eventually, with nary even a shrug.
Five years, they had all run together. Yet they fell away so easily.
Peter had decided to go on to Caledan, for at the time, it was a place of myth and mystery that he had always longed to see. Around the same time, The Shield had been appointed to sit on the Council, the political engine that ran the community of Heroes headquartered on the plateau that was distractingly called the Council of Heroes. The youngest and most powerful Hero yet to have that honor, Carmen represented everything Peter might have been had he not been born nearly powerless at the end of his line.
And so Peter decided to kill him. After all, if he wanted something, he simply took it.
~
“Thiesta gave it a whole day?” Kason asked as the two sipped their third rounds of pomona kir. Snickering quietly, he added, “I thought fer sure she woulda been the first ta go.”
“Alright, I told you my story. Now pay up—where the fuck did you go back in El Ladrón?” Peter asked, leaning back in his chair. They both sat at a small table outside of an alley restaurant, the murmur of conversation from a few other customers accenting the fuggy gloaming. Dusk often came early to Caledan’s sea of high rises, but the city never slept.
Propping his elbows on the table, Kason leaned forward conspiratorially, fixing Peter with his half-lidded eyes and one-sided smirk. In a low tone, he grinned, “Found myself a mentor.”
Peter frowned. “You never needed a mentor. You were the best out of all of us.”
“Well, o’ course,” Kason snorted. “I was a damn good thief, yeah. But this was’n’ any ol’ mentor.” He lowered his voice so that Peter had to lean forward just to hear him. “I got picked up by a villain.”
Peter froze, a peculiar electricity jolting through him. Naku had suggested he himself get a mentor, once upon a time. Peter refused to be a villain, but since then, he had oft wondered what he might be able to learn from someone who could simply walk off a freighter with over three million credits’ worth of stolen stock.
He glanced around to make sure the other patrons were preoccupied with their drinks before turning his attention back to Kason. Careful to hide his interest, Peter commented quietly, “You’re a scoundrel, Kase, but I never took you for a villain.”
“Well,” Kason shrugged, his smirk deepening, “it turns out I got the right ideals. Ya know why I became a thief, right? If I want it, I should have it. The rich do’n’ need it all, right?”
Peter shrugged.
“Well,” Kason snickered, “guess who’s the richest an’ the most arrogant o’ the lot? Heroes. E’ry damn one o’ them. See, Cally-dan here is a global hub. Been anywhere else in the Provinces o’ Sol? Even the richest cities pale in comparison to this place! Why? This here’s the seat of the Council o’ Heroes! They scoop whatever the fuck they want outta our pockets and act like they’s doin’ us a favor by rescuin’ us from—well, people like me.” He snickered derisively. “They created me! It’s the Heroes I’m after now, scuz. They’s the richest an’ I want it.”
Peter leaned forward eagerly, catching on to one thing Kason had said. “You’ve been off world?”
Eyeing him carefully, Kason’s one-sided smirk stretched into a grin. “Ta the farthest reach o’ the Provinces,” he replied. “Part o’ my trainin’.” Propping his elbows on the table again, he asked, “You ain’t never even crossed the mesosphere, ain’t that right, Petey?”
Peter picked up his glass of kir, trying to regain his affectation of nonchalance. “No,” he admitted, “never been that high up. What the hell would an ex-thief need to leave the planet for, anyway?”
“There’s other star systems than Sol, ya know,” Kason laughed. “Plenty rich ones, too.”
“Caledan’s got enough for me,” Peter mumbled into his drink.
“Shame,” Kason smirked, his eyes fixed on Peter’s almost predatorily. “I coulda fixed somethin’ up fer ya with my boss.”
Peter snorted and set his drink down. “I ain’t dumb enough to train as a villain, Kase.”
“Nah, I never figured ya’d take that up—yer too nice ta be a villain,” Kason shrugged, “but I was’n’ talkin’ ‘bout that. I got a bus’ness proposition. See, I got a pretty little heist all lined up that you’ll want a part in—”
Peter hastily glanced around to make sure the other restaurant-goers were still out of earshot. “I play things safe now, Kase,” he hissed. “Especially now that I’ve got this internship, which I really want to work out—”
“Listen, scuz,” Kason pressed, his eyelids drooping even lower as his grin broadened. “This job will set ya up so well that ya can get out o’ Duggery by tomorrow. Ya can live in a place befittin’ a kid who used ta run with my gang.”
“Prison?”
Pointedly ignoring him, Kason went on, “From what I heard, Cally-dan got itself a fresh shipment o’ aether dust a few months back.”
Despite himself, Peter listened a little closer.
“Now,” Kason continued in his low, grating tone, “word on the street says security spiked after some guy called Wraith fucked up a grift. But it’s been long enough now that they’s startin’ ta cool it down. I remember ya sayin’ once that the hit that hurts hardest is a blind sucker-punch just when ya start ta think ya can relax—and I wanna hit them hard.”
He idly picked up his half-empty glass of kir and drained the rest of it. Scrubbing his mouth with the back of his wrist, he said, “Whatta ya say, Petey? We could use a spotter.”
Peter’s hands trembled beneath the table. He certainly needed to acquire aether dust somehow. But if he agreed, he would have to join as Peter, and not as Wraith. He would have to leave his visor behind. His visor emitted a short range scrambler, effectively hiding him from electronic means to determine his identity; however, it was associated with Wraith, and Peter could not let Kason know he and Wraith were one and the same. A year ago, he would have joined Kason without a second thought, but now that he had his Heroes’ mechanic internship, not to mention a girlfriend, he had to be more careful about committing a burglary without extra security to mask who he was...
He mentally checked himself. He was not seriously considering this, was he? His escapades as Wraith had been silent for the past few months. If he managed to complete the internship successfully, he could earn the money to just buy the aether dust, legally and without suspicion.
And if you fail the internship, you’ll have lost two chances to get the dust, his pragmatism whispered in the back of his mind.
Clenching his fingers into fists, he said quietly, “Even relaxed, security is still pretty tight in Caledan.”
Sensing his victory, Kason’s whole face twisted into that ugly grin. “Good thing I got a fantastic locksmith, then.” He tapped his temple, excitement glowing in his eyes.
Frowning Peter asked, “Who—?” He cut himself off, and his eyes widened. “Lita?”
Slapping the table with the palm of his hand, Kason vaunted, “Fuggin’ Lita, man! Found the bitch over in the shan’ytown just west o’ the river. Figures I’d only find you quiet ones—Leon an’ Thiesta were more fun ta have around.”
“I never realized Lita was in town,” Peter mumbled.
“So does that convince ya?” Kason smirked. “I’ve already got everythin’ set. All’s we need ta do is do it.”
“What would be my cut?” Peter asked, sipping the last of his drink.
“My boss gets half, so we split the rest,” Kason explained gleefully. “Even, as we always did. We’ll get as much as we can carry.”
“This boss is the guy who trained you?”
“Yeah. Guy named Vibes,” Kason shrugged. “Says he always operated in a tiny spiral galaxy out on the fringes o’ the stellarverse. This job would be my, uh... graduation, so ta speak.”
“I didn’t realize villains had that.”
“Oh, they’s a whole network,” Kason laughed. Leaning forward, he added, “After the Heroes, I’m goin’ for their wealth, next.” He chuckled again. The familiar tittering snicker brought back so many memories of the times they still ran together that Peter felt a pull of nostalgia. He had missed having a team. And with Kason, he just might get the aether dust he needed.
Peter set his glass down with a clank and stood. “Alright,” he smiled. “I’m in.
~
The aether dust manufacturing plant that Kason had marked for the heist was a mountainous structure stretching along the edge of the river that bordered Caledan’s southeastern edge. Once called the Ohio River, it now was called Nhkutala, in honor of the superhero from Planet Jhn in the il’Li Galaxy. The dust plant spanned several acres near the Nhkutala River’s confluence with the Mississippi—still in the process of being renamed—and its entire complex was the amalgamation of a gigantic machine. The refinement process for aether dust was a complicated and energy-intensive ordeal, requiring whole buildings full of caustic gas, others filled with fermentation tanks, and still others devoted to multifarious catalysis chambers requiring just about every radioactive metal on the periodic table, all as part of the workup for the aether dust.
The refinement plants all across the planet provided jobs for a large portion of the population. Peter might have worked in the factories, once upon a time, had things been different. However, the factories were known for their harsh working environments. Despite the incredible health care coverage they provided, their employees often suffered premature deaths due to organ failures, cancer, or even severe neurological degradation. The refinement process tamed the space dust into much less reactive forms to fuel everyday life, but the process itself often could be worse than the raw material. All in all, Peter was glad he was able to take a job as a mechanic and avoid a life in the refinement plants.
Peter agreed to meet Kason at the plant by nine, so he had time to go home to prepare a little. He left behind his electronic identification devices—his Kypséli as well as his comm—in case there were any passive scanners around the plant. He thought longingly about his visor, desiring that extra layer of security, but the risks of being identified as Wraith were too great. Instead, he donned a dark hoodie and a black face mask. It would have to do.
He met Kason at the corner of 25th and 25th Streets, a rather dark avenue hidden beneath layers of rail lines and the shadows of altitudinous towers. The 25th Streets Neighborhood squeezed in just a few blocks away from the northern end of the aether dust plant, stagnating in the stale fumes pumping from the factory’s stacks. The neighborhood stank of decay and refuse, like many of the lower class areas in other cities where the gang had worked. Its location beneath the more multitudinous layers of overhead tram lines shaded the neighborhood from heavy rains, exempting it from their cleaning influence; the erstwhile shelter also made the small neighborhood an ideal location for many of the homeless waifs, both resident and transient. It seemed a fitting rendezvous, in Peter’s mind. He felt the familiar excitement of a heist with his old team already beginning to burgeon within him.
Kason was already there with Lita when Peter arrived at the corner. Lita was a small girl, mousy by most people’s standards. She was incredibly thin, boasting a diminutive body type that only adolescent girls thought was beautiful. Her baggy overalls seemed to dwarf her in comparison.
She had switched out her dangling piercings with simple studs since last Peter had seen her. They once had clinked whenever she moved, glittering from her ears and her nose, but thankfully she had opted for a stealthier style. Unfortunately, she made up for it with her hair. The left half of her head was now shaved nearly bald, and the right half hung in a curtain past her ear. Though her hair was naturally dark, she had bleached it since they had run in Kason’s band. Against her dark skin, it looked like a glowing beacon in the night. ^Illustration
When Peter arrived, she turned her large, half-lidded brown eyes on him, and her tiny, rosebud lips turned downwards at the corners. Beneath his mask, Peter smiled. He had never known why she refused to talk to him during the five years they worked together, and it seemed like her disposition toward him had not changed. The ordinariness of it—the stability of it—was strangely heartening.
“Petey!” Kason barked around a half-chewed nodule of spack, that smirk pulling at the left side of his mouth again. “Ready ta go?”
“Are we getting fresh dust or refined product?” Peter asked, glancing up at the stacks barely visible above the buildings all around. The river’s energy was used at several points in the manufacturing process, aligning the refinement pathway with the Nhkutala’s flow. As such, the refined product fermented in vats at the southern end. The final product was safer to handle, but it was generally cheaper at a fence. It was also not reactive enough for Peter’s needs. If he could get the right tools, he might be able to make it work, but it was not ideal.
To Peter’s satisfaction, Kason smirked and said, “As fresh as we can find it. Die or get rich tryin’, right?”
Lita snorted, and Peter grinned.
“So what’s the plan?” Peter asked as Kason set off across the street with his brisk, loping stride. Lita hurried after him, almost jogging to keep up, and Peter followed.
As they wound through the narrow streets, Kason explained over his shoulder, “You’ll go in with Lita first. Get her ta the security office ta shut off cameras and security measures and so on. I’ll go in and get the goods.”
“I thought you needed me to watch your back—”
“Yeah, you’ll come meet me after gettin’ Lita in safe. We was gonna have her access their mainframe remotely, since she apparently gave up prowlin’, but now that yer with us, ya can get her inside ta do more damage.” Kason cast him a sidelong glance over his shoulder. “Ya can still prowl, right?”
“Of course,” Peter muttered, shifting his face mask a little higher on the bridge of his nose. “Gave up prowling, huh?” he directed at Lita. In all her years devotedly breaking into locked buildings for their gang, she had never mentioned disliking it. She just ignored him as usual, her expression sour.
“Once ya get her in,” Kason carried on, “you ‘n me’s will carry out as much dust as we can.”
“How will we carry—?”
“Relax, scuz,” Kason chortled, pausing at a street corner. “It’s all taken care of.”
When Peter reached the corner, he stopped, as well, and stared in awe. The narrow corridors of the slum opened to an empty expanse almost thirty yards across, bare of plant or manmade device. Left and right, the yawning space seemed to circle the entire plant, isolating it from the city. On the other side of the clearing, the manufacturing plant loomed like a gargantuan mountain above them, so high that the tops of its stacks and towers were lost in the yellow haze of its fumes. Unlike the constant hum and thrum in the city, the plant moaned and growled and rumbled. It sounded monstrous and threatening, like one of the colossal beasts that made life a daily gladiatorial ring on most of the planets in the Andromeda Galaxy.
Sparing the factory only a passing glance, Kason struck out to the left along the edge of the warehouse, heading toward an old trash alley packed with large rubbish crates. Rustling through the refuse, he withdrew a burlap duffel bag and tossed it on the ground. Peter and Lita moved to join him as he rifled through its contents.
“Here,” Kason said, tossing a wrapped object at Peter and another at Lita. Curiously, Peter unwound the old cloth from the heavy object and dropped it into his hand. With a start, he realized it was a small pistol. It was simple in design, a single-shooter with only five individual pysa-capsules. Lita unwrapped her parcel to discover the same.
Frowning, Peter muttered, “I never agreed to shoot anyone, Kase.”
“They’s precautionary,” Kason shrugged, withdrawing a pistol of his own and tucking it into a holster beneath his arm.
“We’ve always done burglaries,” Peter argued. “We’ve never needed guns.”
“And now we’s breakin' into one o’ the most highly secured locations outside o’ the Council,” Kason pressed. He raised an eyebrow at Peter as he worked his jaw around the spack nodule quietly hissing away as it slowly dissolved. “Look, just keep it on ya. If ya’d rather get shot, then do’n’ use it.” Reluctantly, Peter tucked the pistol into the pocket of his hoodie.
Reaching into the bag again, Kason next withdrew two large barrels wrapped in shoulder harnesses. Peter’s eyes widened at the sight of them. They were remarkably similar to the one that Naku had had back when he intercepted Peter the last time he tried to steal aether dust from Hero Vaise’s ship. They were larger, however, probably close to ten gallons each.
“You planning on buying yourself a galaxy?” Peter asked sardonically, reaching out to take one of the barrel packs.
“Ya mistake me fer a common man with common goals,” Kason laughed, tugging both of them out of reach. “I’ll keep hold o’ these while ya get Lita inside. They’ll just slow ya down.” To Lita, he said, “Did ya bring yer lock-pick thing?”
In answer, she withdrew her hand from her pocket and held up a small, oval-shaped, palm-sized device with two screens and a slot that could fold open into various-sized protrusions. It was the same pick she had always carried, combining both physical lock-picks and an electronic setting to hack into the more ubiquitous high-tech security systems.
Kason smirked, “Great. Toss it. I got ya one better.” She glared at him as he dug through his duffel and withdrew a similar device. It was a little larger, less worn, and matte gray in color. In addition to its cybertronic screens and physical pins and rods, it boasted a small lens of some sort.
“New tech,” Kason explained, tossing the device at her. She caught it deftly and turned it over, immediately thumbing it to life and inspecting its settings. The screens did not glow in the darkness like her old one, but dimpled and buzzed inaudibly. It was a tactiplectic device, a newer technology boasting faster baud rate and stabler interface, and which was far less prone to device failure than older tech. Lita’s eyes lit up with delight.
Laughing, Kason said, “I figured ya’d like that. They’s got tighter security than we usually hit, so that should do ya good.” Reaching into the bag one last time, he tossed an older model Kyp at Peter. “That’s got the layout o’ the plant. Stripped o’ transmission capabilities, so it should’n’ trip any o’ their alarms.” Peter turned it on and scanned the small display, quickly scoping a route and singling out areas that he should avoid. The plant had been designed for efficiency, and as such some areas created corridors with limited exits. He did not want to get cornered.
“Get Lita ta the security office an’ let her do her thing,” Kason went on as Peter studied the map. “Once she’s done, meet me here.” He pointed to a spot on the map near the northern edge of the factory. “The vats fer pre-workup are in this sector, but now they’s got a bunch o’ physical security patrollin’ around it—no thanks ta that dumbass Wraith. Wo’n’ be a problem fer you, though, eh?”
“You said they were starting to let up—“
“Yep,” Kason interrupted brusquely, slinging a barrel pack over his shoulder. “Before, they was patrollin’ everywhere. Alright, it’s just about fifth shift change. You two ready ta go?”
Lita gave a perfunctory thumbs-up, and Peter strapped the old Kyp to his wrist. Without another word, the three of them split, Kason heading in one direction and Peter and Lita heading the other. Peter felt charged and nervous as he darted across the empty corridor toward the factory, Lita slinking along at his side. But this was his bailiwick. Once he fell back into the rhythm of working with his old team, this entire heist would be a piece of cake.
Chapter 3.2
(C) 2020 RLK

We all love to read stories about big wins and imagine ourselves in the shoes of those winners. But, have you ever thought about what happens at that very moment after successfully beating the slot machine? Usually, the slot machine locks up and, in most cases, you hear the music and see the flashing lights on top of the machine. But one of the first questions every player asks is whether they have to pay taxes on casino winnings? Well, you’re about to find out!

Taxes on Slot Machine Winnings in USA

In the USA, when a lucky player hits a jackpot, there’s the option of receiving the winnings in cash or check. In case it’s a large sum, it’s usually paid by check. However, the IRS only obliges the casinos to report winnings that are larger than $1,200.
Of course, all winners are obliged to show a proper identification— a valid ID or passport. When the casino checks for your identification they also look at your age to make sure you are officially and legally old enough to play. As the minimum legal age for gambling varies from state to state, be sure to check it out before you decide to play.

Do I Have to Report All Winnings?

All gambling winnings received from slot machines are subject to federal taxes, and both cash and non-cash winnings (like a car or a vacation) are fully taxable. Apart from slot machines, the same applies to winnings from lottery, bingo, keno, poker or other games of chance. So, if the amount won on a slot machine is higher than $1200, the casino is required to report it. In other words, all your gambling winnings have to be reported on your tax return as "other income" on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8.

Slot Machine Winnings in W-2G Form

In case it happens to you and you snag that big win (which we hope one day you will), it’s useful to know that casino or other payer must give you a W-2G Form, listing your name, address and Social Security number. So, if the winnings are reported through a W-2G Form, federal taxes will be withheld at a rate of 25%.
If, however, you didn’t provide your Social Security number (or your Tax Identification Number), in that case the withholding will be 28%. Either way, a copy of your Form W-2G should be issued, showing the amount you won alongside the amount of tax withheld. One copy needs to go to the IRS, as well.
Aside from slot winnings, Form W-2G is issued to winners of the following types of gambling activities like:

• bingo (for players who win $1,200 or more),
• keno (for at least $1,500 worth wins)
• poker tournament players (for the $5,000 win or more).
• a horse track (if the winnings are 300x your bet)

However, not all gambling winnings are subject to IRS Form W2-G. For instance, W2-G forms are not required for winnings from table games like blackjack, baccarat, and roulette, whatever the amount. You’d still have to report your winnings to the IRS, it’s just you won’t need to do it through W-2G Form.

Are My Slot Losses Deductible?

The good news is that you can deduct your slot losses (line 28 of Schedule A, Form 1040), while the bad news is gambling losses are deductible only up to the amount of your wins. In other words, you can use your losses to compensate for your winnings. So, let’s say you won $200 on one bet, but you lost $400 on one or a few others, you can only deduct the first $200 of losses. Meaning if you didn’t win anything for a year, you won’t be able to deduct any of your gambling losses.
In order to prove your losses, you need to keep good records and have suitable documents. So, whenever you lose, keep those losing tickets, cancelled checks and credit slips. Your documentation must include the amount you won or lost, a date and time, type of wager, type of your gambling activity, name of each casino/address of each casino you visited and the location of their gambling business. You may as well list the people who were with you.

Do State and Local Taxes Apply Separately?

Yes, you are required to pay your state or local taxes on your gambling winnings. In case you travel to another state, and snag some huge winning combo there, that other state would want to tax your winnings too. But don’t worry, you won't be taxed twice, as the state where you reside needs to give you a tax credit for the taxes you pay to that other state.
Keep in mind though that some states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio don't allow gambling losses.

Online Slot Taxes

Whether you usually spin the reels of your favourite casino games in land-based casinos in the US, overseas casinos, or online casinos, all income for the citizens of the US is taxable. As a US citizen, you are required to send Form W2G for all winnings from a slot machine (not reduced by the wager) that equals to or is more than $1,200.

Taxes on Slot Machine Winnings in UK

As a resident of the United Kingdom, your gambling winnings won’t be taxed. Unlike the USA mentioned above, you’ll be allowed to keep whatever it is that you have won and earned in Britain, even in case you are a poker pro. Then again, you won’t be able to deduct any losses you might collect.
It doesn’t really matter if you win £5 or £5 million playing online slots, your winnings will be tax-free as long as you reside anywhere in the UK, be that in England, Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland.

Taxes on Slot Machine Winnings in Canada

If you are a recreational player who lives in Canada, we have good news for you. When it comes to gambling, you don't have to pay taxes as your winnings are totally tax free. According to laws in Canada, gambling activities don’t fall under the category of constant source of income, therefore your winnings will not be taxed.
Canadians don't even pay taxes on their lottery winnings. The only exception here are professional gamblers who make a living from betting and are, therefore, obliged to pay taxes. Keep in mind though, this is the current situation - laws in Canada change frequently, which may also include tax laws.

Taxes on Slot Machine Winnings in Australia

In case you reside in Australia and like to visit casinos from time to time, you’ll be happy to find out that your winnings in Australia will not taxed and here are 3 core reasons for that:

• Gambling is not treated a profession (it's treated as a hobby)
• The government doesn’t see profits from gambling activities as income, but as a result of good luck
• The Australian government taxes casino operators and lottery organisers instead.

Of course, taxation varies from state to state.

Taxes on Slot Machine Winnings in New Zealand

Unlike in Australia, where even professional players can claim they are recreational, in New Zealand slot machine winnings (and any other winnings from casino games) are considered taxable income, in case the player has little income from other resources.
But, apart from professional gambling, it is very unusual for winnings to be taxed in New Zealand. Most often, gambling is considered recreational and not income, so players can enjoy their gameplay as they do not have to pay taxes on their winnings.

Among the more frequently mentioned G+ alternatives at the Google+ Mass Migration community, and others, is MeWe with over 250 mentions. The site bills itself as "The Next-Gen Social Network" and the "anti-Facebook": "No Ads, No Political Bias, No Spyware. NO BS. It is headed by professed Libertarian CEO Mark Weinstein.
As the site reveals no public user-generated content to non-members, it's necessary to create an account in order to get a full impression. I thought I'd provide an overview based on recent explorations.
This report leads of with background on the company, though readers may find the report and analysis of specific groups on the site of interest.

Leadership

Founder & CEO Mark Weinstein.
Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, Jonathan Wolfe (no longer with company).
Weinstein previously founded SuperFamily and SuperFriends, "at the turn of the millennium". Weinstein's MeWe biography lists articles published by The Mirror (UK), Huffington Post, USA Today, InfoSecurity Magazine, Dark Reading, and the Nation. His media appearances include MarketWatch, PBS, Fox News, and CNN. He's also the author of several personal-success books.
His Crunchbase bio is a repeat of the MeWe content.

Advisory Board

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor of the World Wide Web.
• Jack Canfield: Legendary Founder, Chicken Soup For The Soul.
• John Friedman: Founding Partner, Easton Capital.
• Cullen Hoback: Director, Terms and Conditions May Apply.
• Dianne Morrison: Partner, MorrisonMcNabb, LLC.
• Colin Sebastian: Director, Equity Research/Internet, RW Baird.
• Brett Shevack: CEO, Brand Initiatives; Former Vice Chair, BBDO.
• Marci Shimoff: author, Happy for No Reason.
• Sherry Turkle: Professor, MIT; author Alone Together.

Ownership & Investment

MeWe is the dba of Sgrouples, a private for-profit early-stage venture company based in Los Angeles, though with a Mountain View HQ and mailing address, 11-50 employees, with $10m in funding over five rounds, and a $20m valuation as of 2016.
Sgrouples, Inc., dba MeWe Trust & Safety - Legal Policy c/o Fenwick West 801 California Street Mountain View, CA 94041
Crunchbase Profile.
Founded: 2012 (source)
Secured $1.2M in seed funding in 2014.
2016 valuation: $20m (source]
Backers:

• John Friedman, venture capitalist, founder & MD, Easton Capital, New York, NY.
• Jack Canfield, author, Chicken Soup for the Soul.
• Marci Schimoff, author, Love for No Reason, Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul.
• Tom Myers, investment advisor.
• Mykola Latansky, personal improvement guru, Ukraine.
• Dan Phillips, entrepreneur, co-founder, CloudHealth Technologies.
• Jack Sweeney, CEO, SevOne, operating partner, Bain Capital Ventures. (WSJ Profile)
• Rachel Roy, fashion designer.
• Lynda Weinman, founder of Lynda.com.

Despite the business address, the company claims to be based in Los Angeles County, California and is described by the Los Angeles Business Journal as a Culver City, CA, company.

Business

• MeWe Raises $3m in Funding FinSMEs (March 9, 2016).
• Facebook Alternative MeWe Raises $5.2M Los Angeles Business Journal (July 7, 2018).

Policy

In an August 6, 2018 Twitter post, Weinstein promotes MeWe writing:

Do you have friends still on Facebook? Share this link with them about Facebook wanting their banking information - tell them to move to MeWe now! No Ads. No Spyware. No Political Agenda. No Bias Algorithms. No Shadow Banning. No Facial Recognition.

MeWe provide several policy-related links on the site:

• Privacy
• Terms of Service
• FAQ
• Values
• Privacy Bill of Rights

Highlights of these follow.

Privacy

The privacy policy addresses:

• Content Privacy Policy: You own your content.
• Tracking Privacy Policy: We respect your privacy.
• Message disappearance (self-expiring messages).
• California Disclosures -- Do Not Track, 3rd-party cookies, and California Privacy Rights.
• Your Identity: We protect it to the extent the law allows
• Linking to Third-Party Sites: These are your decisions and responsibilities
• Security: HTTPS and Encryption
• Children's Privacy
• Notifications
• Privacy Policy Changes

Terms of Service

The ToS addresses:

• Your acceptance
• Allowable Content and Acceptable Use
• Rights Reserved
• Who Our Services are For
• Privacy
• User Content Ownership
• Passwords
• Misuse of Usernames, Page names, Group names
• Fake Accounts (pseudonyms allowed, misleading is not)
• More on Spam
• Our Commitment to Data Security
• MeWe Content Data
• MeWe Log Data
• Your Data Portability
• Deleting Your Account -- Right to Erasure
• MeWe Secret Chat
• MeWe Invitations and "Add Automatically"
• Additional Policies for Pages, Groups, and Events Notifications of Requests for Account Information
• Guidelines for Law Enforcement Seeking Customer Data (Worldwide)
• MeWe Rights
• Indemnity
• Ownership In and To the Site and Services
• Other Provisions

Effective: November 6, 2018.

FAQ

The FAQ addresses:

• What is MeWe (emphasises privacy)
• The Politics of MeWe ("absolutely no political agenda")
• How can MeWe be free and make money? (additional services/freemium)
• Which devices is MeWe available on? (Android, iOS)
• What content can I share on MeWe (photos, videos, documents, voice messages, privacy mail, chats, gifs, memes, doodles)
• What are some unique features of MeWe?
• Who can see the posts I share?
• Can I delete my MeWe account and is it easy to do this?

Values

This emphasises that people are social cratures and private people by right. The service offers the power of self expression under an umbrella of safety. It notes that our innermost thoughts require privacy.
Under "We aspire...":

MeWe is here to empower and enrich your world. We challenge the status quo by making privacy, respect, and safety the foundations of an innovatively designed, easy-to-use social experience.

Totalling 182 words.

Privacy Bill of Rights

A ten-item statement of principles (possibly inspired by another document, it might appear):

1. You own your personal information & content. It is explicitly not ours.
2. You will never receive a targeted advertisement or 3rd party content based on what you do or say online. We think that's creepy.
3. You see every post in timeline order from your friends, family & groups. We do not manipulate, filter, or change the order of your content or what you see.
4. Permissions & privacy are your rights. You control them.
5. You control who can access your content.
6. You control what, if anything, others can see in member searches.
7. Your privacy means we do not share your personal information with anyone.
8. Your emojis are for you and your friends. We do not monitor or mine your data.
9. Your face is your business. We do not use facial recognition technology.
10. You have the right to delete your account and take your content with you at any time.

Press

There are a few mentions of MeWe in the press, some listed on the company's website, others via web search.

Self-reported articles

The following articles are linked directly from MeWe's Press page:

• Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America (LeadPages)
• 2018 "One to Watch" Tech Trends Report (Helt.Digital)
• SXSW Start-Up of the Year Finalist (LeadPages)
• MeWe CEO Talks About Europe's Privacy Rules (PBS)
• Inventor of the Web Tweets About MeWe (Twitter)
• Should You Delete Your Facebook Account? (Mirror - UK)
• Send Facebook & Twitter a message: Use MeWe Insteat (Appleworld)

The page also lists a "Privacy Revolution Required Reading" list of 20 articles all addressing Facebook privacy gaffes in the mainstream press (Wired, TechCrunch, Fortune, Gizmodo, The Guardian, etc.).
There are further self-reported mentions in several of the company's PR releases over the years.

Other mentions

A DuckDuckGo search produces several other press mentions, including:

• Facebook Alternative MeWe Raises $5.2M, Los Angeles Business Journal (July 7, 2018) "The latest round, as well as MeWe’s total $10 million in fundraising, was predominantly backed by celebrity investors, such as author Marci Shimoff, Rachel Roy, and Lynda Weinman, founder of Lynda.com, which sold to Linkedin in 2015 for $1.5 billion. Jack Canfield, creator of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book series, also invested in MeWe."
  
• Full Page "Dear Facebook" Letter In The New York Times from MeWe, the Competitor Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Name Yahoo Finance/PR Newsire (May 28, 2018) "Facebook competitor MeWe, in its first-ever advertisement on any medium, took a full-page in the New York Times on Sunday, May 27th. MeWe's "Dear Facebook" letter is a direct response to Mark Zuckerberg's letter ad on March 25th, and a response to Zuckerberg's refusal to name a Facebook competitor in front of Congress."
  
• Is building a Facebook alternative worth the effort? MeWe thinks so VentureBeat (July 5, 2018) "[T]here are still companies hoping to make their mark in the social networking realm with “Facebook alternatives.” One of those is MeWe, a “next-generation” social network that positions itself as the anti-Facebook: “Your private life is not for sale. No ads. No Spyware. No BS,” its website proclaims." Continues to mention "modest $5.2 million" funding round. Also a "sister product", MeWePRO, a Slack competitor.
  
• 5 easy and simple ways to protect your privacy online — how to prepare for the next big threat Medium/Mark Weinstein (November 16, 2016) "If there’s one thing everyone wants to protect it’s their privacy and information online."
  
• Startup MeWe Launches Free, 'No Ads' Social Network eWeek (March 16, 2016) "MeWe, a new network engineered with its users' data privacy built in, is betting that a lot of people will say yes to both of those questions. The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup, whose parent company is Sgrouples.com, launched its freely available social network out of beta March 9 with more than 200,000 members already using it.... Sir Tim Berners-Lee, co-architect of the World Wide Web, found out about MeWe on his own and approached the company about getting involved."
  
• Facebook Alternative MeWe closes $5.2M Series A Yahoo/PR Newswire (July 5, 2018). "The investment brings MeWe's total funding to $10 million, to support the engineering of MeWe and the enterprise version MeWePRO.... The company has relied on high net worth individuals for all of its funding including Lynda Weinman, founder of Lynda.com ...; Marci Shimoff, a #1 New York Times bestselling author ...; Rachel Roy...; and Jack Canfield."
  
• Exactis Data Leak 2018: 340 Million Records Exposed InvestorPlace (June 29, 2018) "'Today's cookies can link your mobile phone to your laptop, to your home monitoring devices, and much, much more. Creepy? Scary? Orwellian? Yes, yes, yes,' Mark Weinstein, the privacy expert and founder of social media company MeWe, told MarketWatch. 'So imagine that Exactis, like Facebook, knows everything about you — really.'"
  
• MeWe Raises $3M in Funding FinSMEs (March 9, 2016) "Sgrouples, Inc., the Mountain View, CA-based developer of MeWe, a social network with neither ads nor tracking, raised $3m in funding."
  
• MeWe Raises $4.8 Million, Launches Next-Gen Social Network Cision/PRWeb (March 9, 2016) "The company also announced the completion of its $3 million Seed III round of funding at a $20 million valuation, bringing MeWe’s total funding to date to $4.8 million."
  
• Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s app MeWe is used by neo-Nazis and perverts The Times of London (January 8, 2019) "The social network that Sir Tim Berners-Lee hoped would be free from abuse has been found to contain gun sales, drugs and antisemitism."
  

Technology

This section is a basic rundown of the user-visible site technology.

Mobile Web

The site is not natively accessible from a mobile Web browser as it is overlayed with a promotion for the mobile application instead. Selecting "Desktop View" in most mobile browsers should allow browser-based access.

Mobile App

There are both Android and iOS apps for MeWe. I've used neither of these, though the App store entries note:

• MeWe Android 4.4 rating (13.1k ratings). Permissions: Contacts (read), Location (approximate/precise), SMS (receive), Phone (read status & identity), Photos/Media/Files (read, modify, & delete contents), Storage (read, modify, or delete), Camera (take pictures/videos), Microphone (record audio), Device ID & Call Info (read status & identity), and numerous elements under Other.
  
• MeWe iOS 4.3 rating (18.1K ratings) In-app purchases (additional features).
  

Crunchbase cites 209,220 mobile downloads over the past 30 days (via Apptopia), an 80.78% monthly growth rate, from Google Play.

Desktop Web

Either selecting "View Desktop" or navigating with a Desktop browser to https://www.mewe.com your are presented with a registration screen, with the "About", "Privacy Bill of Rights", "MeWe Challenge", and a language selector across the top of the page. Information requested are first and last name, phone or email, and a password. Pseudonymous identities are permitted, though this isn't noted on the login screen. Returning members can use the "Member Log In" button.
The uMatrix Firefox extension reveals no third-party content: all page elements are served from mewe.com, img.mewe.com, cdn.mewe.com, or ws.mewe.com. (In subsequent browsing, you may find third-party plugins from, for example, YouTube, for videos, or Giphy, for animated GIFs.)
The web front-end is nginx. The site uses SSL v3, issued by DigiCert Inc. to Sgrouples, Inc.

Onboarding

The onboarding experience is stark. There is no default content presented. A set of unidentified icons spans the top of the screen, these turn out to be Home, Chats, Groups, Pages, and Events. New users have to, somehow, find groups or people to connect with, and there's little guidance as to how to do this.

Interface

Generally there is a three panel view, with left- and right-hand sidebars of largely navigational or status information, and a central panel with main content. There are also pop-up elements for chats, an omnipresent feature of the site.
Controls display labels on some devices and/or resolutions. Controls do not provide tooltips for navigational aid.

Features

Among the touted features of MeWe are:

• My Cloud - Seamlessly organize all your content in My Cloud; it's your personal cloud. My Cloud offers an interactive dashboard for you to control everything you’ve posted or shared - making it simple to delete or reshare.
• Unique profiles - Be yourself, free from any tracking and spying. Customize your profile for every group you create or join.
• Voice integration (on any or all content) - Post pictures, videos, or documents and include a voice message. Respond to a shared post or just chat. MeWe’s voice integration works for you and your contacts throughout the entire platform.
• Universal tagging - This is a new, convenient way to sort and organize all the content you receive and share, making it easy to find everything, anytime.
• Enhanced permission control (patent issued) - Manage permissions on a granular level and decide exactly who sees what. You can also remove yourself from the search directory, make yourself invisible to other members online, and much more.
• Much More – join MeWe today and take a look inside! MeWe is the next-gen social networking experience designed for you to have fun, stay in touch, collaborate, organize, and simplify.

Community

A key aspect of any social network is its community. Some of the available or ascertained information on this follows.

Size

Weinstein claims a "million+ following inside MeWe.com" on Twitter.
The largest visible groups appear to have a maximum of around 15,000 members , for "Awesome gifs". "Clean Comedy" rates 13,350, and the largest open political groups, 11,000+ members.
This compares to Google+ which has a staggering, though Android-registrations-inflated 3.3 billion profiles, and 7.9 million communities, though the largest of these come in at under 10 million members. It's likely that MeWe's membership is on the whole more more active than Google+'s, where generally-visible posting activity was limited to just over 9% of all profiles, and the active user base was well under 1% of the total nominal population.

Active Users

MeWe do not publish active users (e.g., MUA / monthly active users) statistics.

Groups

MeWe is principally a group-oriented discussion site -- interactions take place either between individuals or within group contexts. Virtually all discovery is group-oriented. The selection and dynamics of groups on the site will likely strongly affect user experience, so exploring the available groups and their characteristics is of interest.
"MeWe has over 60,000 open groups" according to its FAQ.
The Open groups -- visible to any registered MeWe user, though not to the general public Web -- are browsable, though sections and topics must be expanded to view the contents: an overview isn't immediately accessible. We provide a taste here.
A selection of ten featured topics spans the top of the browser. As I view these, they are:

• MeWe Favorites
• Music
• Entertainment
• Lifestyle
• Travel
• Health & Fitness
• Foodies
• Cars & Motorcycles
• Technology
• Fashion and Beauty

Specific groups may appear in multiple categories.
The top Groups within these topics have, variously, 15,482, 7,738, 15,482 (dupe), 7,745, 8,223, 8,220, 1,713, 9,527, 2,716, and 1,516 members. Listings scroll at length -- the Music topic has 234 Groups, ranging in size from 5 to 5,738 members, with a median of 59, mean of 311.4, and a 90%ile of 743.5.
Below this is a grid of topics, 122 in all, ranging from Activism to Wellness, and including among them. A selected sample of these topics, with top groups listed members in (parens), follows:

• Activism: QAnon+++ (2,572), PATRIOT PREPPERS USA (2,430), Deplorables Republic (2,48), The War Drummer (1,898), Patriots for a United America. (1894), Anonymous (1,700).
  
• Alternative Energy: Reiki, Crystals, and alternative healing (2,114), 💜Starseeds & Empaths💜 (345), Living in Colour (365).
  
• Alternative Lifestyle: Natural Healing and Home Remedies (3,045), Backyard Farming of All Things (2,696), WeTheSheeple (2,251).
  
• Alumni Connections: Google Plus Refugees (271), Google+ Refugees (186), Frog Pond (156), Carlsbad NM High School alumni (57).
  
• Animals: I Love My Dog (4,421), Pussy Shots (4,619).
  
• Astronomy: Spherical Earth Truth, Flat Earth is Wrong (278), Nibiru, Nemesis, Hercolobus, The Destroyer (187).
  
• Biology: Trees (344), Field of Birds (104), Patriots of Australia (51).
  
• Blogs: Women Bloggers (1,439), Urban & Wilderness Survival & Preparedness (1,367), Conservative Patriots & Oath keepers (742).
  
• Books and Book Clubs: PNW Book Club (1609), Bookworms (1,464), Erotica and Erotic Romance Book Lovers (1,219).
  
• Business: Small Business Connect (2,565), Deep Survival (1,183), Marketing and Social Media Tips (1,173).
  
• Career Building: Marketing jobs and opportunities (698), Famous Quotes (184), Automotive Technicians (57).
  
• Celebrities: Madonna Mania (116), Katy Perry (Hot!) (103), Trance Gemini of andromeda 2.0 (16).
  
• Classrooms: Are YOU Awake too? (1331), CRT (Crystal Resonance Therapy) Student Support (28).
  
• Clubs / Associations: RCBS Reloading Equipment (685), Boat Owners United (670), The Caliber Canteen (Reloading/ Firearms Buy/Sell) (505).
  
• Co-workers: Money Making sites to SHARE (235), Cop and retired cop friends (85).
  
• Coders: Hacker (978), Delphi Developers (269), Python (258).
  
• Colleges and Universities: SEC Football (832), Christian Apologetics: Campus Apologetics Alliance (221).
  
• Cooking: *recipies/homecooking* (2,618), Low & Slow BBQ (1,582), Mexican Foods and Recipes (1,503), Budget Meal Recipes (1,004).
  
• Culture: Destroying the Illusion Fans (1147), my friends (551), Coffee Addicts (542).
  
• Cyclists: Car Free Cities / Cycle communting (26).
  
• DIY: Homesteading DIY (5843), Prepper Living (3110), Knucklehead Homesteading (2102), 1911 owners forum (1,474).
  
• Dating: 🌸something Beautiful just for you too🌸 (237), Relationship Junction (171), LDS Dating (114).
  
• Education: Q-Anon Patriots (1,616), InfoWars.com (1,217), Constitutional Liberty for All (907), Prepping, Homesteads skills and Community (887), Shamanic Community (756), Truther Talk (665).
  
• Environmental: Geoengineering, Chemtrails, HAARP (455), ShareYourLove (253), The Seasons (193), Near Term Human Extinction Love (174).
  
• Family: Raising Natural Kids (1,496), Dogs (1,075), VACCINE DANGERS (583).
  
• Fraternities: Freemasonry (1072), Brotherhood of the Blade (313), Proud Boys Canada (74).
  
• Friends: MEWE FRIENDS ( NO NUDES ) (2,416), FIREARMS UNLIMITED...MEWE Version (1,517).
  
• Gamers: Tabletop RPG's and Boardgames (1,936), Dungeons & Dragons (1,499), OSR (1,485).
  
• Green: Aquaponics and Self SustainingLlifestyle (655), ENVIRONMENT and CLIMATE (583), Chasing Butterflies - Vaccine Free (385).
  
• Health & Fitness: NATURAL HEALING AND FOODS (8,221), Bodybuilding (5,321), Natural alternatives for Modern Health (4,680), Vaccine Free (3,285).
  
• Heart of All Women: Christian Women Talk About ANYTHING (39).
  
• History: 9/11, False Flags, & NWO Truth (1,872), The American Cowboy (1,065), "This Day in History" by Tara Ross (590).
  
• Hobbies: CinDes Embroidery (1,974), Another Caliber to Conquer (1,800), Sonia Showalter Machine Embroidery Designs (1,696).
  
• Home Improvement: Renovations With Grace❤️ Question & Answers (723), Home improvement DIY Group (79), Buildings churches castles etc (33).
  
• Homeschooling: Christian Homeschool Parents (889), Open Path Homeschool: Secular, Buddhist, Pagan, UU (145), The Lords Prophets (33).
  
• Hunting & Sportsman: GUN POST Group (Canada) (5,097), Guns, Ammo, and Supply's (5,023), OLD GUNS AND OLD FARTS (4,902).
  
• Innovation: Bitcoin/Crypto/Blockchain (759), CRYPTO 24/7/365 (28), 2 Real News (372), Tisk 3D modelů - 3D print (26).
  
• Jewelry: DFW Gold And Silver Coins And Currency (449), FIRE AGATE GEMSTONES (106).
  
• LGBT: HOUSE OF KNIGHTS - ENTERTAINMENT & MAIN GROUP (680), HOUSE OF KNIGHTS - HISTORY (421), HOUSE OF KNIGHTS - CARTOON (409).
  
• MEMES: MeMe Wars (3,758), MILITARY MEMES/FUNNY MILITARY MEMES (2,616), Shitposting Dumpster Fire (2,318).
  
• MLM: Post your biz opp here. (855), Make Money Moms Work at Home (612), Work From Home Opportunities (428).
  
• Medicine: Dinosaur Docs (120), MEDICAL MALPRACTICE (88), Zhong - Beroepsvereniging voor TCG (56).
  
• Medicine & Herbs: Herbal Survivalist Spot (2,353), There's an Oil for That™ (1142), 🌴Weed News🌴 (880).
  
• Meetups: light workers (1,203), MeWe Welcome (or "It's Not a Ghost Town") (729), The Banter Lounge (223).
  
• Movies and Film: Digital Movies (4K, HD, iTunes, MA, UV) (2,519), Ultraviolet Digital UV & MA Codes (Buy/Sell/Trade) (2,073), Science Fiction (1,483).
  
• Music: 60's 70's 80s Music (5,739), Musicians of MeWe! (5,194), Guitar Playing (3,921).
  
• Neighborhoods: Texas Issues (317), Cascadia Circles (235), Houston tx (214).
  
• Nerds: Cosplay (1,856), Classic Sci-fi Kingdom (1,292), Marvel (410).
  
• News: Judge Jeanine Pirro has Fans (7,808), Qanon News (3,466), Unfiltered News (2,913).
  
• Non-Profit: TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT (190), Flat Earth Database - 地平論資料庫 (127), Florida Carry (99).
  
• Organic: Gardening Guru's Unlimited (1,381), GMO FREE for me! (1,076), Americans For Cannabis (874).
  
• Organizations: TRUMPANDPENC2016 (1,454), Low Country Survival Prepping & Camping (1,064), Wisconsin Firearms Trader (614).
  
• Parenting: Vaccines Empower Warrior Voices (391), Moms talk (360), Peaceful Parenting (131).
  
• Personal Improvement: For Introverts. (1,214), Anarchy, Philosophy, Psychology, and Spirituality (679), Positive Affirmations (447).
  
• Philosophy: In5d Esoteric Metaphysical and Spiritual Database (1,764), Thought Bouncing (1,137), Obtectivists - Galts Gulch - Ayn Rand fans (561).
  
• Poetry: Dead Poest (1,407), Palacio de Poetry (451), Poets Corner (412).
  
• Politics: Donald J. Trump 2016 - Present (11,486), The Conservative's Hangout (8,345), Qanon Follow The White Rabbit (5,600), Drain The Swamp (4,978), Libertarians (4,528), United We Stand Trump2020 (4,216).
  
• Pop Culture: The Loftus Party (116), The Walking Dead: The Stalking Dead (100), Tyler, Texas (71).
  
• Privacy: Join the Open/Privacy Movement (3974), Kingsport tn gun trader (1,157), Safer Computing (555).
  
• Psychology: Inspiring Spirituality༺❉༻ non-religious~ universal (1,486), sacred plants & psychedelix community (1,212), OUR.Psychology (701), Dream Interpretation (537).
  
• Recreation: Everything Reloading (3,252), Redeye Reloading (1,980), Fishing (1,549).
  
• Relationships: Complementarian Thought (50).
  
• Religion / Spirituality: LoveHasWon (3,245), The Christian Underground (2,604), Pagan Friendly Folk (1,630).
  
• Robots: Arduino Hexapods, Balancing Robots, and projects (137).
  
• Romantic: Snapchat Add Party (2,681), Green Heart (1,270), ROMANCE COMMUNITY (205).
  
• Science: Consciousness (1,327), Steven's Private Alien/UFO Group (668), BIGFOOT HAPPENINGS (538).
  
• Self Help: * SURVIVE and THRIVE* (858), Preparedness and Off Grid Living (763), Free (631).
  
• Self-Directed Learning: Exposing the Matrix of Lies (997), WAKE THE FUCK UP (474), Wake the Fuck Up. The Next Dimension (287). WTFU when SHTF (126).
  
• Social Change: Armed with Truth and Knowledge (1,986), VEGANS UNITE (766), ACTIVISM universal headlines ~❉~ (729), Meet Earth's Cosmic Neighbors (MECN) (663).
  
• Space: Space (579), ** THE AMAZING UNIVERSE and OUR WORLD** (546), WE ARE NOT ALONE... (488).
  
• Sports: Australian IPSC Buy And Sell (591), Formula 1 (295), Border War Rifle Series, Iowa PRS Matches (280).
  
• Sports Teams: Liverpool FC (228), GEORGIA BULLDOGS (129), The Black and Gold (89), Dallas Cowboys Fans (80).
  
• Subculture: Neon Revolt (3,696), Redneck Funnies (2,042), Serial Killers And True Crime (724).
  
• Surfers: NZBM BEACH VIBES (416).
  
• Sustainability: Common Sense Home (1,746), The Survivalist (1,603), Barter For Prepping/Survivalism/Homesteading Goods (1,274).
  
• Techies: MeWe Help And Support (948), Geek Time (220), GZOSP (124).
  
• Technology: Apple Discussions (2,722), Linux and Open Source Users Group (3,423), Cutting Edge Military Technology (3,201).
  
• Transportation: Truckers Life (431), Aviation (316), Duramax Diesel (312).
  
• Travel: Travel Tips and Recs (8,234), Travel, Food & Wine, Cocktails + Craft Beer Lovers (6,071), Texas (2,694).
  
• Trending News: **UNDER ATTACK & FIGHTING BACK!** (1,138), US News Page (691), THE AMERICAN PATRIOT (609).
  
• Twitter: Twitter Hates Conservatives (198), Cstle Ricochet (35).
  
• Videos: ♥ MY FAVORITE YOUTUBE VIDEOS ♥ (926), Video Meditations (196), The 80's Again - My Retro 80's Music And Video (180), Deep Space Seven (127), Naked Male Celebrities (74).
  
• Wellness: Minds Awaking Consciousness Restored (1,855), Hemp Earth (1,164), Mind-Body-Spirit (993).
  

To be clear: whilst I've not included every topic, I've sampled a majority of them above, and listed not an arbitrary selection, but the top few Groups under each topic.

Google+ Groups

• Google Plus expats (1,862)
• Google+ Refugees (186)
• G+ Refugees (101)
• my Google+ expatriates

The Google Plus expats group seems the most active of these by far.

Political Groups

It's curious that MeWe make a specific point in their FAQ that:

At MeWe we have absolutely no political agenda and we have a very straightforward Terms of Service. MeWe is for all law-abiding people everywhere in the world, regardless of political, ethnic, religious, sexual, and other preferences.

There are 403 political groups on MeWe. I won't list them all here, but the first 100 or so give a pretty clear idea of flavour. Again, membership is in (parentheses). Note that half the total political Groups memberships are in the first 21 groups listed here, the first 6 are 25% of the total.

1. Donald J. Trump 2016 - Present (11486)
2. The Conservative's Hangout (8345)
3. Qanon Follow The White Rabbit (5600)
4. Drain The Swamp (4978)
5. Libertarians (4528)
6. United We Stand Trump2020 (4216)
7. The Right To Self Defense (3757)
8. Alternative Media (3711)
9. Hardcore Conservative Patriots for Trump (3192)
10. Bastket Of Deplorables4Trump! (3032)
11. Return of the Republic (2509)
12. Infowars Chat Room Unofficial (2159)
13. Donald Trump Our President 2017-2025 (2033)
14. Berners for Progress (1963)
15. Sean Hannity Fans (1901)
16. The American Conservative (1839)
17. I Am The NRA (1704)
18. Tucker Carlson Fox News (1645)
19. We Love Donald Trump (1611)
20. MAGA - Make America Great Again (1512)
21. Q (1396)
22. ClashDaily.com (1384)
23. news from the front (1337)
24. Basket of Deplorables (1317)
25. Payton's Park Bench (1283)
26. Convention of States (1282)
27. Britons For Brexit (1186)
28. MoJo 5.0 Radio (1180)
29. MeWe Free Press (1119)
30. The Constitutionally Elite (1110)
31. Libertarian (1097)
32. WOMEN FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP (1032)
33. AMERICANS AGAINST ISIS and OTHER ENEMIES (943)
34. #WalkAway Campaign (894)
35. ALEX JONES (877)
36. The Lion Is Awake ! (854)
37. We Support Donald Trump! (810)
38. The Stratosphere Lounge (789)
39. TRUMP-USA-HANDS OFF OUR PRESIDENT (767)
40. Official Tea Party USA (749)
41. Mojo50 Jackholes (739)
42. Yes Scotland (697)
43. "WE THE DEPLORABLE" - MOVE ON SNOWFLAKE! (688)
44. Judge Jeanine Pirro Fans (671)
45. Anarcho-Capitalism (658)
46. Ted Cruz for President (650)
47. No Lapdog Media (647)
48. Q Chatter (647)
49. Daily Brexit (636)
50. Tucker Carlson Fox News (601)
51. The Trumps Storm Group (600)
52. QAnon-Patriots WWG1WGA (598)
53. 100% American (569)
54. Ladies For Donald Trump (566)
55. Deep State (560)
56. In the Name of Liberty (557)
57. Material Planet (555)
58. WikiUnderground (555)
59. Trump NRA Free Speech Patriots on MeWe Gab.ai etc (546)
60. Magna Carta Group (520)
61. Constitutional Conservatives (506)
62. Question Everything (503)
63. Conspiracy Research (500)
64. Bill O'Reilly Fans (481)
65. Conservative Misfit's (479)
66. Canadian politics (478)
67. Anarchism (464)
68. HARDCORE DEPLORABLES (454)
69. Deplorable (450)
70. Tampa Bay Trump Club (445)
71. UK Politics (430)
72. Bongino Fan Page (429)
73. Radical Conservatives (429)
74. RESIST THE RESISTANCE (419)
75. The Deplorables (409)
76. America's Freedom Fighters (401)
77. Politically Incorrect & Proud (399)
78. CONSERVATIVES FOR AMERICA ! (385)
79. Political satire (383)
80. RISE OF THE RIGHT (371)
81. UK Sovereignty,Independence,Democracy -Everlasting (366)
82. The Patriots Voting Coalition (359)
83. End The Insanity (349)
84. Coming American Civil War! (345)
85. Constitutional Conservatives (343)
86. United Nations Watch (342)
87. A Revival Of The Critical Thinking Union (337)
88. The New Libertarian (335)
89. Libertarian Party (official ) (333)
90. DDS United (Duterte Die-hard Supporters) (332)
91. American Conservative Veterans (331)
92. Anarchism/Agorism/Voluntaryism (328)
93. America Needs Donald Trump (326)
94. The UKIP Debating Society (321)
95. Coalition For Trump (310)
96. Egalitarianism (306)
97. FRIENDS THAT LIKE JILL STEIN AND THE GREEN PARTY (292)
98. 2nd Amendment (287)
99. Never Forget #SethRich (286)
100. Green Party Supporters 2020 (283)

It seems there is relatively little representation from the left wing, or even the centre, of the political spectrum. A case-insensitive match for "liberal" turns up:

• 104: Conservatives Against Liberal Beliefs C.A.L.I.B (273)
• 184: Progressive and Liberal Politics (119)
• 301: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder (33)
• 302: Resistance Against Liberal Socialism (33)
• 358: NOT For Liberals (17)
• 367: Drinking Liberally Houston (14)
• 400: Stephanie Miller's Sexy Liberal Army (6)

Mainstream political parties are little represented, though again, the balance seems skewed searching on "(democrat|republic|gop)":

• 11: Return of the Republic (2509)
• 161: Death to the Democrat Party! (138)
• 188: Republican Liberty Caucus (113)
• 306: Twin Cities South Metro Republicans (32)
• 316: Non-Conspiracy, Non-Republican Libertarians (30)
• 323: Democrats and Veterans Party (28)
• 364: GOP Fireworks (15)
• 391: Saving The Republic: Video News & Opinion (8)

The terms "left" and "right" provide a few matches, not all strictly political-axis aligned:

• 7: The Right To Self Defense (3757)
• 80: RISE OF THE RIGHT (371)
• 150: POLITICS ON THE LEFT (156)
• 157: 1st Amendment Rights Protected By The 2nd Amendmen (141)
• 209: On The Left With Jeremy Corbyn (84)
• 262: Eyes-Left Labour & PP - Social Media (49)
• 300: Gather Left (33)
• 385: Defend Washington State Gun Rights (9)
• 390: Left Coast Conservatives (8)

Socialism and Communism also warrant a few mentions:

• 121: Revolutionary Socialists United (204)
• 216: Socialist Thought (79)
• 220: Stories Of Communism (76)
• 262: Eyes-Left Labour & PP - Social Media (49)
• 288: Snuggly Wuggly Socialists (38)
• 302: Resistance Against Liberal Socialism (33)

And there are some references to green, laboulabor parties:

• 97: FRIENDS THAT LIKE JILL STEIN AND THE GREEN PARTY (292)
• 100: Green Party Supporters 2020 (283)
• 262: Eyes-Left Labour & PP - Social Media (49)
• 320: Green Party of Ohio Issues & Discussion Group (29)

Conclusion

Whilst there may not be a political agenda, there does appear to be at least a slight political bias to the site. And a distinctive skew on many other topical subjects.
Those seeking new homes online may wish to take this into account.

Updates

• Various typos and tagging corrections. 2018-11-29 - 30
• Added G+MM references count for MeWe to lede paragraph. 2018-12-2
• Wolfe status, Times of London story, typos.

Sorry for the odd formatting and any errors I'm on mobile.
I work for a young (founded in 2015) small (at present we have >30 employees) local company in ohio. And honestly while I enjoy the work there are a few concerns and since my 90 day review is coming up I'm trying to figure out how to address them.
-One of our clients is an illegal gambling den: although they advertise as an "internet cafe" all of their computers run exclusively slot machine emulators that customers pay to put credit on, they run 2 fishing tables which are to the best of my knowledge illegal under federal law because they can be easily rigged to pay out a set percentage, and about 20 actual slot machines. The legal issue is that the place is not registered with the Ohio gaming commission, and while out contract with the client states he will assume all legal and financial responsibility Ohio law also requires anyone working Security in a casino (defined by state law as a buisness that earns more than 50% of it's income from games of chance) to also pass a gaming commission background check and register with them
-hours worked are becoming a concern, Ohio has I will admit crap laws when it comes to worker rights. And by crap I meAn basically Ohio workers have the FLSA and nothing else. They have recently started requiring guards to show up at the office 30 minutes to an hour before their shift to pick up things like radios, site books, and site phones. That 30-60 minutes is not paid, so I'm posted at an appartment from 6pm-2am I have to show up at the office in time to reach the site after a 30minute drive to pick-up the keys, phone, and post order book. The problem here is that from my understanding having been involved in a lawsuit with a previous employer that required employees to show up 15 minutes before their shift to find a functional work stay is that any work that benefits the employer- ie checking out vital equipment, tools, or supplies to perform your duties- qualify as hours worked.
-the people signing contract are idiots. We have some fairly decent stanrads. If your caught sleeping on the clock, playing games, or generally being so distracted you can't realize a problem when it happens you get one warning and are fired the second time. In your first 90 days if you call off 5 minutes before your shift it's registered as a no call no show and your fired. While I applaud the decision it also means we can't always assume we will gain a guard from every batch of new hires. This would be fine except we keep picking up new contracts and are now at the point where pretty much everyone including people just starting are being scheduled for 50-70 hours a week and still being asked to cover shifts for others.
The company has honestly been really good about fixing problems when they are explained to them and the owner so far has responded well to blunt constructive criticism over subtle hints but I'm wanting to be able to walk in with examples and legal statutes I can point to to kinda of edge him in the right direction. One of the reasons I joined this company is because they are open about wanting to grow the company and hiring people who will do the same. The problem is the company is shaping up to be the next securitas rather than the next Pinkerton. Any suggestions on how to maybe take advantage of having the top three of the company in the room and nudging them in that direction would be appreciated.

So some basic info- I work as an armed security guard in Ohio. The company I work for is small consisting of 25 people including the owner and has been in operation since 2013.
The private security industry is a cesspit, I understand that most of it is questionable and most guards are either gung-ho adrenaline junkies hoping something will happen, or lazy and just doing the job because they think it's easy. It's not an exciting job but if you do it right it's not easy either. Tonight alone I've spent 5 hours of a seven hour shift walking, I have talked with the people living at the appartment I'm posted at more today than I talk to the family members I live wit in a week.
I started with my current company because they made a big deal about integrity and being an idiot I swallowed it Hook line and sinker. At present I've already signed papers for legal representation to deal with the fact that they have been doing a lot of illegal things with time keeping- not paying for travel between work sites, regularly rounding time in their favor, and requiring guards to pick up work essential items from the office off the clock before driving to a site to clock in for their shift.
What I'm looking for advice on is the things that don't hurt my income but will likely put me out of a job or may pose a legal risk for me. First the easy one- the company has an alarm response contract with the local school district. When they have an alarm triggered the alarm company calls us and we send out a guard to verify the situation and contact the law enforcement if there is a valid problem. Easy enough, the contract calls for two guards and one dispatch officer to be on duty during the hours school is closed, which is the problem for me at first we had a single guard taking calls and responding to alarm, since the company got caught they have instead switched to having the calls forwarded to our scheduler who then calls the only guard on duty and tells him where to go. If the only guard assigned to the shift is more than 2 schools behind on his response they pull a guard from another post and have him respond to the excess calls. Basically in order to hide that we are in breach of contract they instead violate another contract. This has me a bit concerned because in a roundabout way as a tax payer I'm paying for that contract- and not getting what I pay for.
The second major concern is a mess. Two of our client sites are as near as I can tell illegal casinos by Ohio law. Customers are presented with a selection of games to play- actual slot machine, "fish tables" which while not banned in Ohio have been banned in a number of states due to how easily the operators can rig their payouts in their favor, or the can pay to use the computers. The computers have only one function- to access a collection of slot machine emulators, a person pays for credit and then splits their credit between betting on the slots and paying for time to access the virtual system hosting the slot machine program. Unless the computers are exploiting a loop hole in Ohio's gambling laws then all of these locations income is from gambling. Ohio defines a casino as buisness that derives more than 50% of it's income from gaming related activities and only seven are licensed in the entire state. My concern here aside from the fact that it's an illegal as far as I can tell is that we may be held liable since Ohio Gaming commission requires everyone involved in gaming to be licensed through them regardless of how closely they deal with the actual ges and it's not uncommon for States to due this- I grew up in a gambling town in Colorado and everyone at any of the casino's had to got through the Colorado Department of Gaming for background checks even the guy washing dishes in the kitchen.
I've brought my concerns regarding the companies actions up to the owner and several member of management and be told that they don't know anything about gambling laws but they know security and not to worry because we aren't liable for how our clients make money (and yes I'm aware how stupid an excuse that is) my question to the legal minds of Reddit is what options do I have to either force my employer to correct the stupid behavior or failing that is their anyway to protect myself if I have to repeat the last company I left and metaphorically burn the office to the ground and blow up the ashes?

Spoiler alert: It is awesome innawoods.
https://imgur.com/gallery/xKsWV
For those who missed Part 1 of "How To Buy Humvee", here's a link:
How To Buy a Humvee PART 1: Where to buy and what to do. https://www.reddit.com/Trucks/comments/5b2jgz/how_to_buy_a_humvee_part_1_where_to_buy_and_what/?st=IV46TFVU&sh=0d28d54d
Just like before, you're in for quite a read.
I drove my "new" old truck back to the camping area and immediately started playing around with it. It was running perfectly, but I decided to check the fluid levels on everything I could easily get to. Who knows what you've got until you check? I've heard some skepticism about the 36 mile odometer reading being accurate or not. I'm choosing to believe it is. My reasoning comes from things like the brake pads and rotors being completely unworn. The windshields have no micro scratches from running the wipers. Everything I've heard from knowledgeable sources leads me to believe that they don't take THIS good care of these trucks. Literally every wear item is new unless weather beaten. The most convincing part of the argument is the appearance of the engine oil and tranny fluid. I've owned a few diesel pickup trucks in my travels, but I've never come across any with any appreciable milage that had engine oil and ATF looking like this:
https://imgur.com/a/JCaBW
I knew I was going to waiting at least 24 hours before my rescue party would be able to get there. What was I ever going to do with all of that spare time? No TV, no real internet access... There IS a humvee sitting ten feet away that I can mess with. I immediately started pulling things off of it and pretty soon the campsite looked like an auto salvage yard. I quickly realized how filthy the humvee actually was. Since that morning, I had only sat in a nicely air conditioned car. Thirty minutes ticked by and I was so covered in dirt that my wife probably wouldn't let me in my own yard. Think of the exploding vacuum scene in the tree house from the Sandlot movie. Here's an album of my whole campsite experience:
https://imgur.com/a/QkjQs
The next morning, I had to check out of the campsite before my rescuers would arrive. I ended up driving the humvee back to Govplanet because I knew that would be the best place to load it. There was no place at the camp site like that. I drove it back, disabled it, walked back to camp and retrieved my chase vehicle. I still had a couple of hours to blow, so I decided to use the field next to Govplanet to test out some of the off-roading capabilities of the humvee. The first thing I noticed was how easily it soaked up bumpy roads. The big tires and suspension didn't mind ruts and bumps that I would normally slow down for. I found a big cinder pile that was flat on top and about as high as the hood of the truck. It climbed all over that no matter which direction I attacked it from. After about an hour or so of messing around in the dirt, looking at stuff, and generally getting familiar with my new toy, that awesome Nissan Titan with an itty-bitty car hauler arrived.
I took the whole crew for the same off-road tour I had just done. The cinder pile had us giggling like idiots. There was the usual concern at how high the obstacle was. Then came the unsteady "Whoooaaahhh!!!" as the humvee got its front wheels on top and imposed a particularly unique angle of incline for the passengers in a rather unexpectedly sudden fashion. The guy with the Titan had been somewhat on the fence about buying a humvee. He was hooked.
When we loaded my humvee onto the Uhaul trailer my tires were a bit low. I think that helped squeeze it between the fenders of the trailer. The humvee is technically too wide for the car carrier by about two inches. This is by the numbers. The left side fender on the car carrier should fold down. This is normally to allow for clearance of the driver side door. In this case it allows a little more room for the tire to flex the fenders outward. I put the humvee in 4-low after taking a good long approach to get as straight as possible with the car carrier. Thankfully the area in front of the Govplanet building was very large and flat. I was sure I was too far to the left on my approach. My friends assured me that I was splitting the difference evenly on both sides. I would HIGHLY recommend having someone else competent assist you with loading the humvee on this type of trailer. The chances of you getting a humvee on the trailer by yourself without damaging either are extremely remote. With the tires at about half of proper inflation or less, they seemed to mould themselves over the two rearmost corners on my way up and over the ramps. Then came the trailer fenders. I gassed it ever so slightly to convince the tires to mould around this new obstacle. Here is where that long initial line-up drive toward the car carrier comes into play. Once you squish the front tires between the fenders, wherever the rear tires land as they come up is where they will be. It is what it is. If one side is off or hanging over too much, you'll probably have to start completely over. You won't want to re-do it very many times at all. This is because the process isn't easy on fender or tire. I had some scuff marks on my sidewalls that I wouldn't want multiplied three or four times. Take your time and do this part right. Here is an album of how the thing looked after we called it good.
https://imgur.com/a/MZXIF
Apparently, if the whole circus looks like a gorilla riding a tricycle at this point, you're on the right track. Tying the monster down was actually pretty easy. The chassis of the humvee is absolutely loaded with tie down loops. There are something like three on each rear corner if you count the airlift D-rings under the tailgate, with another one in front and behind the rear suspension on both sides. The front of the humvee has at least two on each corner and there might have been another one or two that I didn't notice after I stopped looking. I previously purchased the tie down straps seen in the photos for my muscle car. Uhaul did not rent those to me. You'll need some sort of additional tie down ratchet straps or chains with binders. The little tire holder webbing that the trailer is equipped with is woefully inadequate to work with 37" tires. I would emphatically recommend against relying solely on the trailer's built-in restraints, but I definitely think they should be used. We looped the Uhaul webbing over the lower front A-arms of the humvee and ratcheted them in their own anchor points to get them out of the way and for a little extra grip.
With my large ratchet straps and the trailer's two additional chassis safety chains hooked up, we hit the road. I was in the chase vehicle, so I can't offer a first hand opinion, but my buddy tells me it was extremely stable and well mannered to pull down the highway. The speed limit in California with a trailer is supposed to be 55 mph. I didn't see one person with a trailer going that slow. At one point we topped 85, but that was a rarity. It seemed to pull along happily at 70-75 mph. It took about six hours to drive home. Once we got there, untying and backing the humvee off of the trailer was only about half as difficult as putting it on. I took it easy past the fenders and listened to my spotter. It was still in 4-low, so it didn't take much throttle. I took it easy over the back corners and the tires moulded themselves over them again. Once it was on the ground, my mind wanted to tear around the neighborhood for the rest of the night, but my body was all done. I took a couple of people around the block and pretty much called it a day.
Over the next day or two I uncovered a couple of minor mechanical issues that initially went unnoticed. Most seriously, the windshield wipers didn't work at all. The driver side low beam was burned out. The passenger side front outer CV joint boot was missing a band clamp. The outer clamps on the steering radius arms were both turned rearward so that they would rub the inside of the wheels at full steer either direction. The passenger side mirror arm was broken at the bottom. Other than these few minor things, the truck was in all but new condition. It was still filthy, so I rinsed the interior out with the garden hose. This method really is surprisingly effective. I got a headlight ordered after my multi meter told me that the filament was blown and I had a good 24 volts at the connector. The radius arm clamps for the steering took all of five minutes to fix.
The windshield wipers were the most challenging thing to fix, but even they took less than an hour. It turns out that the humvee has the ability to fold down the windshield in spite of the fact that I have yet to see even one photo anywhere on the internet of this being done. I looked at the center of the windshield frame after I got the hinge pins knocked out and some wooden blocks under the frame itself. In the center of the frame, there is a set of three electrical contacts encased in a rubber grommet. Some steel wool cleaned them up nicely and I thought I was done. Nope. I had good voltage at the contacts in the dash, but no function at the wiper motor. I carefully pried the grommet out of the windshield frame to find that one of the wires had simply come unplugged. I mashed the sucker back on its terminal that is embedded in the rubber grommet and function tested the wipers. They worked perfectly. Here's another illustration of my exploits:
https://imgur.com/a/KRa8p
I got a new passenger side mirror loop and a replacement sealed beam ordered from eBay. It cost me all of $20 shipped for the loop and about $45 shipped for the light. It took my time installing my existing mirror onto the loop. Like most others, the nuts on it are staked, so it took some doing. All in all, I got it swapped and installed with little hassle. The headlight was as simple as you could ask for. Three captive screws in the ring, three wires, you get the picture. All that was really left was that CV boot on the passenger side. I managed to find a band clamp for it at my local Napa. They sold me the cheesiest little crimper pliers for the band clamp, but it ended up working just fine.
https://imgur.com/a/ZiV9Y
A few weeks later I rediscovered something I had already realized about these trucks. One of the very most important things you NEED to do when you get the vehicle home is inspect it thoroughly. Most of us will check fluid levels without having to be told. As you read before, this is one of the first things I did. The other thing you absolutely must do is go over every system you can and check for loose fasteners. This has been an issue on the A1 my buddy has, and more catastrophically my own.
Be aware that the following happened due to my own stupidity and not because of any significant failing on the part of the humvee. I had been noticing an increasingly loud rattle that was consistent when the engine was at idle. It turned out to be the crankshaft pulley bolts had been loose. The engine vibration at idle was radially loading and unloading the pulley against the four pulley bolts. This had caused the bolt holes to elongate to the point that they wouldn't stay tight. I discovered this about an hour before I was set to leave on the deer hunt. A smart man would have decided to leave the humvee at home until it could be properly repaired to 100% condition. I am not that man. I cranked the bolts down and headed down the road with a much quieter engine. The pulley held on throughout all of the trails and off-roading we put it through. It was absolutely awesome. These things make outstanding hunting rigs. It wasn't until the last trail of my last day on the mountain that the rattle returned. I found myself on a moving blanket in the middle of a muddy road in the middle of a forest cranking those four bolts down again. One felt squishy. I planted myself in the front passenger seat to listen to the pulley. It took ten agonizing minutes to get back to a main highway. Even from there I was forty five minutes from civilization. I knew that if the engine RPM could be kept up the pulley would stay biased to the loaded side of those nifty little banana slots it had machined for itself. Fortunately I was able to coast down off the mountain for over half an hour. I hit the main highway in hopes of keeping the engine load consistent enough to limp back home. It worked great; right up to the point that it didn't. In the darkness I could see pieces of yellow cooling fan being thrown out in front of the truck as I was limping down the interstate at about 45 mph. There was a sickening "chunking" sound as the pulley let go and destroyed the fan, the water pump, most of the front drive accessories and itself. I was riding along with my left hand on the engine start switch so I got it shut down almost immediately. I coasted to a stop at an exit ramp. I got out to survey the gore that was sure to be there. I raised the hood and prepared myself for the worst as I turned on my flashlight. The fan was completely annihilated and the belts were a mess. Most of the other damage was more subtle. The radiator's corner brackets broke loose from their solder points on its top tank. The fan shroud was pretty beat up. The water pump shaft was definitely bent and the alternator shaft was looking a bit wobbly as well. The crank pulley itself had landed on the lower radiator support and was lounging lazily between that and the steering linkage as if it was a hammock. I swear if it could have spoken, it would have offered a plucky, "Oh hi!" It reminded me of the time a friend's toddlers discovered that their diapers were a mobile depository for bedroom wall finger paint material. Best birth control ever. At any rate, the next morning's investigation showed that the fan clutch had been munched as well, but only at the friction disc retainer plate. Good luck finding just those parts. My best option was to spend a little bit extra and get the 200 amp dual voltage alternator upgrade done, so that's what I decided to do. That's a story for another day, but I can confidently say two things. One, the front end of a humvee can be disassembled with relative ease and in a very short span of time with the aid of air tools. Two, these trucks are extremely easy to work on. Even though I had significantly damaged the thing, I was still thrilled to own it. The wife even asked if I was sorry I bought it. My reply was, "No. I'm am sorry I broke it because I'm an idiot who decided to push it." All things considered, I'm not glad it broke down, but I am glad to have learned more about the front of the engine, the charging system and the cooling system. I'm also glad to have the dual voltage upgrade out of the way. Now I can run all sorts of good stuff without killing my lower battery. I can honestly say that working on the humvee was and is an enjoyable process. Here's an illustration of this whole ordeal:
https://imgur.com/gallery/5GwIf
"HOW DO I GET LICENSE PLATES?!?!"
Up to this point, we've all been in pretty much the same boat. Any US citizen in any state can sign up with Govplanet and purchase a humvee. Now we get to the part where some might start falling over the side. Not all 50 states will allow a humvee to be registered for on-road use. There are three remaining hurdles for anyone at this stage of the process. Registration, safety inspection and insurance. I'll tackle these in the order that I approached them from when I went through it. The first thing I did was insurance. I wanted to make sure I was covered in case something happened on the way home. I managed to get mine insured through State Farm, who is my normal insurance company that covers all of my other vehicles. I believe they had to put it under a commercial policy. They asked all sorts of questions about what it was equipped with, intended use, replacement cost, etc. After they had all of the information they needed, it had to be submitted to their underwriting department for review. For a liability policy, I ended up paying a little less that $30 a month. My buddy with the A1 is with Progressive. He's paying a couple dollars less than I am. When I called Progressive, they tried the same liability only commercial policy and ended up wanting $60 or something similar per month. I'm not sure what the difference was between us, but I am happy with what I got.
I live in Utah. For those readers from Utah, this obviously will be the most significant. For other states, you might get some idea of what to expect, but your guess is as good as mine. I have confirmed at least two other states so far in which people have successful registered humvees. I've seen multiple eBay listings for humvees in California of all places. Rumor is (from their listing) that because their humvee was older than 1998, it didn't require smog equipment. Their plates looked real enough. That is all I know about that. I'd suggest logging on to eBay and politely asking to pick the seller's brain about it. The only other state I have personally seen confirmed is Ohio. For a whole video series of that process, check out the Freedom Huddle humvee on YouTube. They have several videos about the process. Watch them all because he mentions something about one or two of them being wrong about the process in some way. I was almost certain from the get-go that I would be able to register a humvee for road use in Utah because Plan B Supply is in my same state. If they could do it without modifying anything on the vehicle, I wasn't worried that I wouldn't be able to do it. First thing I had to do was print out this form:
http://tax.utah.gov/forms/current/tc-661.pdf
Simply printing out the form would have been nice, but the trusty Canon Pixma MX870 multi-malfunction printing station had other plans. I insulted its parentage, called its virtue into question, mocked its personal grooming habits and still it refused to comply. Literally an hour later, I had the inspection form in my hand. This was thanks to a brother using the printer at his mother in law's place. I guarantee that this one will leave this realm very shortly after having a gun pointed at it. The worst part is how it looks so convincing when you first approach it. It lulls you into thinking it will work this time with all of its high-tech features and appearance. Don't believe its lies.
The next thing I had to do was to have a local police officer come out and do a VIN inspection. 24 hours after the call, he pulled up. He was a nice guy and he got pretty interested in the whole thing. Basically he just verified that the serial number on my SF97 matched the serial number on the humvee. He signed the above mentioned form and included his badge number. He then wanted to know all about how to buy one, and what the process was like. We spent more time shooting the bull than we did with the whole VIN inspection process.
At this point I had proof of insurance, a signed VIN inspection form, a valid SF97 and all I needed was my invoice from Govplanet proving that I had already paid taxes. It is included in the post sale info that you pull up after your EUC clears. The next event was something right out of the Office Space movie. Leave it to the old faithful Canon print station to drop the ball again. Some time later I had fully plotted the violent demise of this clueless pile of technological afterbirth, but I was no closer to printing my invoice. In defeat, I simply headed down to the local Kinko's equivalent and paid the 13¢ to have them use their functioning printers to get a physical invoice into my hands. I told the Canon that we don't have a printer in the house and that it was dead to me. It didn't respond. Situation normal.
I headed out to my local DMV with my fingers crossed. I was looking for a temporary operator permit so I could legally drive it down to get it safety inspected. The fact that the deer hunt would fall squarely into the bounds of the temp tag had absolutely nothing to do with any of this... The clerk at the DMV was definitely confused by all the paperwork I handed across the desk. She had to collect everything and disappear for a few minutes to speak with her supervisor. She came back and had an unsettlingly blank look on her face. After a pause which was entirely too long for my taste, she said, "Looks like we're good." I probably crapped out three or four kittens worth of pent up tension. The relief was palpable. I was "pretty dang sure" this was all going to work, but I hadn't really thought about how it was all pretty much do-or-die at this very moment. She let me off the hook even further by confirming that all I had to do was bring back a passed off safety certificate and she would simply "hand me my plates". Because I was in the clear and I already had her attention, I decided to ask, in no uncertain terms, if it is always possible to register a military humvee in Utah. She confirmed that there is no problem at all. There are three counties that require them to pass smog; Salt Lake county, Utah county and Cache county. Here in southern Utah, we are good to go. Any of you readers out there who might be in Utah, but not in those counties, can buy with confidence.
The guys at the garage I went to for the inspection were again more interested in the vehicle than the safety inspection itself. I am noticing a pattern with this. With everything functioning, the humvee passed with flying colors. A couple of days later, I walked out of the DMV with fully street legal plates for my very own military surplus humvee.
https://imgur.com/gallery/Ldxns
The amazing feeling of freedom is hard to explain. After all the waiting, worrying and wanting, I made it. It is done. I own a street legal humvee. I can drive it anytime I want to. I have become "that hummer guy" in the neighborhood. I waded through all the rumors and here-say. I discovered the path through the process for myself and it was completely worth it. If you think you're the type of person who would enjoy a truly unique vehicle to drive around town, a humvee seems to fit the bill quite nicely. Those looking for a comfy highway cruiser need not apply. If you're interested in a vehicle with some insanely capable off-roading credentials, you definitely should consider a humvee. Above all, the looks you get from Jeep drivers are absolutely priceless.