“I thought there weren’t many basements in California,” Parkowski said as she carefully went down the concrete stairs into Chang’s lower level. “Because of all of the earthquakes.”
“Ma’am, you are correct,” the former Space Force officer said. “However, that assumes that you are in a basement.”
“Huh?” Parkowski said.
At the bottom of the stairs there was a long hallway, much longer than the length of the house. Metal doors on either side lined the passageway.
Parkowski turned to DePresti. “Is he crazy?” she asked.
Her boyfriend laughed. “Just eccentric.”
“How did you afford a supervillain lair?” she asked Chang.
“Oh, eight… no, ten years ago, I made some good investments,” he replied. “Did a little cryptocurrency trading.”
“How much did you make?”
“I ended up with over three and a half million dollars.”
“Million?”
“Million.”
“And what did you do with that?”
“I doubled it again.”
“Holy shit,” Parkowski said.
“Yup. But before then, when I was sitting with a cool two million in the bank, I started the process of designing my dream home, which you are in right now, while contracting out the start of the construction work that would prepare the ground for all of the structures,” Chang continued. “I considered a few different areas, but my family is all from the SoCal area, so I settled on Barstow. I can show up at family functions while still living by myself without anyone bothering me.”
Parkowski laughed. “I think there’s an Everybody Loves Raymond episode about that.”
“There is, and believe me, it went into consideration when I chose my location.”
“So how did you do it?”
“I built this level, and then paid a ridiculous amount of money to cover it with sand and dirt. Then, I toured a couple of older, failing California rural communities and found the house that you slept in. Then, I paid an exorbitant amount of money to have it relocated on top of the bottom level. Finally, I had to connect the underground portion to the house above and put on the finishing touches.”
Chang started walking to the end of the hallway. DePresti turned and whispered to Parkowski, “Enjoy the show, I just got the tour too.”
She snorted and followed the shorter man to the end of the hall.
He opened the first door. She recognized the smell almost instantly. “Here is my grow room.”
The room was full of marijuana plants, arranged in rows with a sophisticated irrigation system suspended from the ceiling.
“And your smoke room?”
The man shrugged. “That too.”
He closed the door and led Parkowski and DePresti to the next room.
“Here is my hydroponics suite.”
The room was the same as the marijuana room, except with vegetable plants suspended in water substituted for the narcotic plant.
Chang closed that door, then switched to the other side of the hallway.
The next door hid a large studio apartment, at least five or six hundred square feet, with a television, king-sized bed, eat-in kitchen, and small bathroom. “Here’s where I sleep.”
Parkowski laughed. “Was Mike in there with you last night?”
Chang laughed back at her. “No, he was next door.”
He showed her the guest room, or at least one of them. “Here’s where Mike spent the night.”
She gave her boyfriend a punch on the shoulder with her good arm. “And I had to sleep upstairs in the cold.”
DePresti got defensive. “You were so weak, so tired, we wanted to get you in a bed,” he said. “The one upstairs was the closest one. And you were out as soon as we got you under the covers.”
Parkowski laughed. “Fair enough.”
Chang hurried them down the hallway. “This is my work area,” he said, showing DePresti and Parkowski a good-sized room, twice as large as his living space, with strange blue-and-green lighting. It had both a computer console with an oversized seat and six monitors spread out in front of it as well as a virtual-reality area with tape on the ground off to the side. “I spend a lot of my time here.”
“I can tell,” DePresti said.
The next door held a server room which reminded Parkowski of the secure “NASA room” she had broken into. The basement also contained a storage room, full of emergency rations, “in case shit really hits the fan,” as Chang said, an armory, another guest room, and strangely enough, a wine cellar, in addition to a couple of storage areas. It seemed like Chang spent most of his time underground.
“This is it,” he said, showing her the final storage room. It looked like he bought a lot of things in bulk from Costco and Sam’s Club. “This is what a cool two million will buy you in the California desert.”
She laughed. “So, are you completely off the grid?”
Chang laughed. “As much as I can be.” He took a breath and then explained. “I have solar panels, but I’m unfortunately tied into the grid there. Even in the desert, I just don’t get enough for everything I do.
