The father sat smoking a fat hand-rolled cigarillo. He puffed foul smoke into the windowless subbasement unit his family occupied. Three children in dirty undershirts stood around him. One held a charging datapad with a cord running to the wall, another a holo-game controller getting no signal, and the littlest hugged a hand-me-down stuffed unicorn. The toddlers spoke to Samantha in Mandarin and she replied in English. They didn’t understand but their dad did. He eyed her as she worked.
“Your router needs to be replaced,” said Sam.
“It still works,” said the dad.
“This thing is twenty years old if it’s a day and not strong enough to get a signal down here.”
He looked away and smoked. Sam already knew he was piggybacking off their upper neighbor’s signal. He stared at an old laptop that was useless without a network connection.
“How much for a new one?”
“At least $1800.” She knew he couldn’t afford it and he looked away again. “I could splice your unit and suck a little speed from the three hundred other protected connections in the building, but it’s technically illegal.”
“Would we have free net again?” asked the dad.
“Yeah, and I’ll do it better than before so no one will find you and kick you off.”
