Free Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Dakan, Rick Page A

like everyone else we knew, but we didn't want to have to fuck with gangbangers or cops or any of that bullshit.

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    "But really there was always just one dream - to be left the hell alone by everyone else. The cops. The gangs.
    The school teachers. Our parents. Why the hell wouldn't they just let us do our thing? That's what we were always asking ourselves. Now I'll be the first to admit I've never had a real job. I grew up in this life, and I've never known anything else. And I love this life. When I was18, I disappeared. Whoever I was before then vanished - dead or never existed, depending on who you asked. And ever since, I've lived without leaving a trace, even as I live a great life."
    Isaiah turned to Amelia at this point, smiling as he put a hand on her shoulder. "I found a beautiful wife. I've got two great kids." This last revelation shocked Paul. The idea that someone could raise children living the way he and Chloe did astonished him. "But it's getting harder," Isaiah continued. "Even with a Crew that's like family and that, in all modesty, is as kick-ass a group of Net-thugs you're ever gonna meet, it's getting harder.
    And this world of ours? It's sure as hell getting meaner.
    "I've come to realize that, in these days when every flavor of organized crime is getting into our cyber-business and when paranoid government bastards are letting loose their own viruses to get in everyone else's shit, that a small Crew like mine - or like any of yours - we can't survive. We'll get swallowed up. That's why we have to evolve. Evolve or die." Isaiah paused for a moment to catch his breath. He'd been talking fast toward the end there, excited by his own rhetoric.
    Paul was intrigued to be sure, swept up in Isaiah's story. But so far it was just words and concerns, not a plan.
    "Evolve into what?" Paul asked.
    Isaiah looked at him and for the first time since Paul met him, he smiled a broad, wolfish grin. "Into something that's too big and tough for anyone to swallow."
    "You want to organize the Crews?" asked Paul. "Form one big Crew?"
    "In a way..." Isaiah began.
    "That's just asking for trouble, isn't it?" Paul asked. "They have a name for that kind of thing - organized crime. And organized crime has FBI task forces assigned to fight it and gets involved in mob wars with other outfits. Not the best way to be left alone if you ask me."
    "You're absolutely right," agreed Isaiah. "And that's not what I'm talking about. Besides, ain't none of us the kind of folk who like to take orders from others, right?" Paul nodded in absolute agreement. Out of the corner of his eye Paul saw that Winston was watching him closely. What did Winston think of this plan, he wondered.
    "Capos and mob bosses and all that Sicilian bullshit is most definitely not the way to go," said Isaiah.
    "Evolving into something like them would be like evolving into dinosaurs - a big step backwards. We're already smaller, and smarter, and freer than the Mafia. I don't want to give that up any more than the rest of you.
    "But for all our freedom, we're not the freest people in the world. We still operate in one country or another.
    We still have to play by their rules to a certain extent. But the nation-state is dying, my friends. It feels power and control slipping from its grasp, and in its death throes it's tightening its grip. Rather than get crushed in that grip, I propose joining the ranks of those that are killing it. I'm talking, of course, about the rise of the stateless transnational corporation."
    "You want to incorporate?" asked Paul, somewhat disappointed. Winston had said something about revolution. What was revolutionary about a corporation?

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    "To start with," said Isaiah. "But that's only the beginning."
    "What good does that do us?" asked Paul. "Other than create a paper trail that could lead some IRS
    investigator right to our front door."
    "Well to start with, the company won't be anywhere that the IRS can