The reason was found on the ground floor of the concrete structure as they came back down a spiraled loop from the top floor. Over half of the lowest level was roped off as construction machines and workers scurried around.
“What’s going on?” Parkowski asked, not expecting an answer.
DePresti smirked.
“One of OuterTek’s sister companies, The Looping Company — originally part of OuterTek — does what they call ‘hyperloops,’” he explained. “They’re trying to build high-speed mass transit underneath urban areas. Think a Japanese bullet train but on a frictionless air bearing instead of on tracks. They’re in theory building one starting here all of the way north to San Francisco, but to be honest, I think it’s a boondoggle. They started back when I was at the Academy but haven’t made much progress. Every once in a while The Looping Company puts out a press release on some new technology, or promise to link LA with Las Vegas or Denver, but to the best of my knowledge no one has ever ridden on it.”
Parkowski laughed too. “So what have they done?” she asked as he checked through the garage for a spot again. Every single one looked full.
“They did a small-scale prototype almost ten years ago,” DePresti said, “that supposedly worked well. I think it went just over a kilometer. But nothing’s happened since then.” He sighed. “I don’t think there are any spots.”
“So what do we do?” Parkowski asked.
“Let me try something.”
He drove out of the parking garage and stopped at the intersection between it and the main OuterTek building. “Get your Aering badge out,” he told Parkowski.
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Parkowski rolled her eyes and gave him the badge as DePresti drove across the street. Almost instantly a security guard on a golf cart drove up to their truck. “Excuse me, I need to see your identification,” the nondescript white man in his forties asked.
DePresti handed over his OuterTek badge and Parkowski’s Aering ID. “Here you go,” he said.
The guard scrutinized them intensely.
“Does she have a green badge?” he asked the Space Force officer.
“No, I’ll have to get her a red badge at the front desk. They know she’s coming,” DePresti lied.
The guard nodded and handed the ID cards back.
He pulled the golf cart aside so DePresti could drive through to the small parking lot in front of the main building.
DePresti looked for a visitor’s parking spot but those, too, were all full.
“Well, hot damn,” he said softly. “What do we do now?”
“Can you pull into one of the other spots, the ones with numbers on them?” Parkowski suggested.
“No, those are reserved for OuterTek big-wigs or VIPs coming to visit,” he replied. “We can’t park there.” He looked at the clock. “Actually, I take that back. It's almost three. They should be pretty much done for the day. I think we should be safe.”
“You think?”
“It’s better than going back to Barstow empty-handed,” he argued.
“Fine,” Parkowski said, pointing to a spot with a “4” on it. “Park there.”
“Aye, aye,” DePresti said sarcastically as he pulled in. He stopped the vehicle and took out a pen and notepad from his bag.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m writing down all of the different wireless passwords we used while I was spending time at OuterTek,” DePresti explained as he jotted down a dozen phrases. “They cycled through about ten or twelve while I was working that program. Hopefully one of them will still work and you can get into their network. Make sure you pick the guest one — it’ll get you access to all of the stuff you’re looking for. And here,” he continued as he wrote a few more lines below it, “is my username and password. They still work as of last week.”
“And if none of this works?”
“Then hopefully I find something while I’m inside,” he said as he opened the door to the truck. “If I’m not back by six, just take it and drive back to Andrew’s. I can find my own way out of the city.”
“Good luck,” Parkowski said as she reached around with her good arm for her bag. She gave him a brief kiss.
DePresti stepped back as he attached his green OuterTek badge to his shirt. “Good luck to you as well.”
Parkowski sighed as he walked off. She hated the feeling of losing control of the situation, but her boyfriend was right. She could do more good outside in the parking lot than inside of the massive complex.
Maybe the answer could be found inside the OuterTek networks. Thankfully, Chang had told her that it was ok to connect to them. “We’ll just have to put the laptops in the do-not-use category afterward,” he had joked. “They’ll be tainted.”
She pulled out a year-old HP model from the bag. Time to get to work.
Parkowski booted it up and started looking for a wireless network to get on.
There were five to choose from. But, she remembered DePresti had said she wanted the “guest” one. She chose the one with “guest” in the name and was asked for a password.
