Homeowners Associations were nonprofit organizations found throughout the United States, which property owners joined voluntarily and funded through membership dues.
Their primary purpose was to manage a residential community's public facilities, security, landscaping, and other shared resources, ensuring that the overall quality of the community was maintained and improved. They were part of American community culture.
Of course, in a place full of poor people like Hell's Kitchen, the existence of a Homeowners Association was a little more complicated, especially at a time like this.
Regardless, Lier had decided to establish himself through this approach. The urgent problem he needed to address was security.
That meant he needed a legitimate identity under which to handle these matters, such as a company that provided security services.
Security services weren't limited to hiring bodyguards, of course. They also included electronic security systems, such as surveillance networks.
The comprehensive human-machine interface security systems from the world of Cyberpunk 2077 might have been riddled with vulnerabilities there, but that was only because the hackers in that world were so formidable.
In the Marvel Universe, at this point in time, Lier's hacking skills were undoubtedly among the best. In security, even if he wasn't better than 99.9 percent of people, he was at least better than 99 percent.
Things like the facial recognition systems used in cameras, threat detection and logging mechanisms, and his experience designing security systems could all be turned into security solutions with a little organizing.
But his clients were all broke, and he couldn't bring himself to charge Mr. Rigordo.
So he would have to earn his initial funding himself.
He had plenty of software he could adapt from the cyberpunk world, but he was just a slum kid who had recently woken from a coma. Rich people weren't going to invest in him just like that.
He would have to make a name for himself first.
Another reason was that the people in this community had helped his family a great deal while he was unconscious. He couldn't simply walk away.
First on his list was restoring and securing the community's existing surveillance network, whether privately or publicly owned.
Mr. Rigordo offered no opinion on Lier's first task.
He took out a stack of signed agreements and documents and said indignantly:
"Including you and me, we've got eight households, twenty-six people. There was another family... Hmph, that guy said he'd found a job as a typist and was planning to move out.
"The bastard still owed me two months' rent! I always thought he didn't have any money. I only let him fall behind because of his little daughter!
"But yesterday, as soon as I finished telling him about this, he paid up and ran! Coward!"
"This is already pretty good-and... there are quite a few strong men among the remaining households."
Lier scanned the residents' information with his Cyber-Eye, recording all the data in his head.
The documents Rigordo had given him appointed Lier as the Homeowners Association's representative and authorized him to carry out the relevant work.
"What good does that do? They're all dock laborers. There's no work at the port, so they're just waiting to starve."
"In our current situation, I wouldn't call them useless." Lier put the documents away in his repeatedly patched cloth bag. "Next, I plan to sign a contract with my own company. I'm going to modify the electrical wiring around the building and reorganize the surveillance network, free of charge."
"If it's free, do whatever you like. Just don't break anything-come to think of it, there are cameras inside the apartment building too. Don't know why they've lost power.
"The company that installed those things went bust and disappeared. Nobody knows how to fix them."
Rigordo mimicked the people he'd spoken to. "'The wiring here is like maggots in a cesspit'-fuck them."
Lier was brimming with confidence. "I'll fix it-hmm... I'll also need two bodyguards."
As he spoke, he selected two burly men from the files.
John Burnett, thirty-two, Black, with a young son at home; Anthony Flor, forty, Latino, whose wife was the loud-voiced Natalia, with a daughter.
Both were dock laborers, and unusually gifted at the job: they ate little, worked hard, and were still powerfully built.
Someone like Lier could take a stroll through the streets of Hell's Kitchen and probably come back with a battered face. His wallet wouldn't stand a chance.
Of course, a quick aside: why had tenants joined the Homeowners Association too?
Tenant rights in the United States were fairly extensive after several rounds of expansion. Here at Mr. Rigordo's place, though, everyone was poor and several months behind on rent.
They had nothing else to do anyway, and refusing meant getting kicked out. They might as well tag along and see what happened.
After knocking on doors and finding the men, Lier had his work crew assembled.
Looking at his two bodyguards, Lier said, "Our job today is to sort out the apartment building's wiring, then reinstall the surveillance system."
Anthony raised his hand with a question. "I know you, Lier. I even chipped in some money for you last year, back when I still had work. How'd you suddenly turn into a little whiz kid?"
Huh?
Lier felt a little awkward-he'd run into someone who had helped save his life.
"Uh... I didn't have much choice. I've got to help take some pressure off my mom, right? Besides, none of us wants to end up homeless, so of course I had to study hard."
"That's true. All right, I'm willing to work with you. There's no work to be found out there anyway. If I lose my home, I'll have to take my wife and kid out onto the streets.
"But let me make this clear first. We're law-abiding people. We won't do anything illegal or dangerous."
The Black man beside him had no objections. He seemed to be the quiet type.
With two six-foot bruisers flanking him, one Black and one white, Lier felt thoroughly secure.
Even the street punks looked a lot less unpleasant.
As a major city with centuries of history, New York's electrical wiring was an absolute shitshow, especially in a slum like Hell's Kitchen.
A tangle of wires extended from the utility poles, spreading over the streets like spiderwebs.
This was what an electrician's nightmare looked like.
But the scanning function of his Kiroshi Cyber-Eye let Lier easily record and trace the apartment building's wiring.
Tracing the wires would let Lier locate the distribution stations that supplied the building and consider ways to optimize the circuits, reducing the risk of fire and, more importantly, ensuring a reliable power supply.
He could even install backdoors in the power transmission network.
The two bodyguards followed Lier in utter boredom as he marked every distribution station along the route before arriving at the substation.
Next, Lier needed to hack into the substation.
So how would he do that?
In the cyberpunk world, hackers could hack things with a glance because practically everyone was connected to the network.
In New York in 2011, however, that was a little more difficult.
An experienced hacker wouldn't be stumped by this step, of course.
Lier spent an afternoon staking out the substation, using his Kiroshi Cyber-Eye to find someone whose badge identified him as a senior engineer.
After getting his name, Lier found detailed information about him online.
Once he had the information, he could find the man online-that was the ideal scenario. In reality, this was 2011, and most people weren't in the habit of airing their opinions on the internet.
So Lier needed to start with a cell tower. He could directly crack the data packets exchanged between telecommunications companies and, after finding the engineer's name, use the tower to hack into his phone.
Once he obtained the substation's basic operating procedures and other information from the phone, he could install a hacking device in the right place and take control of the substation's circuits.
The process wasn't exactly legal, but it was his only option for now.
Otherwise, the surveillance system would be on duty Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and off on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That was hardly surveillance at all.
For safety's sake... perhaps he ought to do a little more.
With that thought, Lier found the nearest cell tower.
Then, to his surprise, he spotted a suspicious figure fiddling with something nearby.
Bang.
"Why is this so hard? This isn't what they said on the BBS..."
The figure was clearly a girl. She slammed the metal door over the control panel shut with a bang.
She was still muttering curses.
When she looked up, she saw Lier and the two big men behind him, one white and one Black, staring straight at her-
"Oh, shit!"
Startled, the girl turned and ran, too panicked to watch where she was going.
With a thud, she tripped over a cable and fell to the ground.
Lier and the two men exchanged looks, then decided to go over and check on her.
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